Red Marten | València (EFE) most voted in Spain and the Valencian Community to “sweep” in the local elections.
This is how the mayor of Vigo and president of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces, Abel Caballero, and the mayor of Mislata (Valencia), Carlos Fernández Bielsa, both from the PSOE, who met last weekend, have considered it to questions from EFE. at the Socialist Municipal Conference held in Valencia.
In that act, Caballero predicted that his candidacy was going to “sweep” on May 28 and that he would be mayor of Vigo “25 more years”, and Bielsa claimed that in his city there had never been “majorities as relevant as those of this moment ”, such as when in 2019 he achieved 62.9% of the votes in this municipality of 43,000 inhabitants attached to the Valencian capital.
Transparency, management and attending to everything
For this, the secret, Abel Caballero considers, is “everything”: “It is to transform a city, it is the services, it is to humanize the streets, so that people can experience the street, the action of sport, the action of culture; is everything, the secret is to attend to everything”.
It also involves “defending your city above all else and knowing that when someone attacks it, you have to respond”, he assures, although he points out that he is speaking strictly “in political terms”, in addition to “loving the people of the city like your family’s.”
The mayor of Vigo, who exceeded 101,058 votes in the last municipal elections of 2019, equivalent to 67.64% of the ballots, is the mayor of a Spanish city of more than 200,000 inhabitants with the highest percentage of votes in all of Spain and, he assures, “of European democracies with multi-party systems”.
“We used to be a city with little self-esteem and now we are immensely proud to be from Vigo”, highlights the mayor, who celebrates having been able to put his city “on the map”.
In part, he acknowledges, he has done so thanks to being “very media-ready”, something that he considers a sign of “democratic health” and “the greatest transparency that one can have”.
“I give a press conference every day, sometimes two, sometimes three and even four in one day,” says Caballero, who believes that not only “you have to be there” and answer the questions but also be, like him. is defined, “genuine”.
“I am who I am, and I turn on the Christmas lights challenging the mayor of New York to see if he is capable of doing something similar to Vigo, and if a group of guys tell me to breakdance, then I breakdance. Did the video have three million views? Well yes, ”she defends.
But a mayor lives not only on image, and the one from the city of Pontevedra highlights some aspects of his management, such as the scholarships for students from Vigo who study English during a summer month in England, which have reached more than 10,000 people, sport free in municipal spaces or the check for 205 euros per family to pay for textbooks “in a difficult year”.
If I had to give advice to a first-time mayor to revalidate his majority, it would be, he says, “move the city, act in the city, change the city, care for the city, defend the city.”
“You have to be one more citizen, who channels and understands what others tell you,” he recommends, in addition to, in short, “take what they tell you, put it in your brain, refine it and take it out as a project.”
A city candidacy
Participation, dialogue, consensus and work to form “a network of which everyone feels part” is “the key” for the mayor of Mislata, Carlos Fernández Bielsa, who is committed to “unity” for “candidates for city” and for not forgetting that “politics is done in the street, with the people”.
With an electoral census of 32,575 people in his city, Fernández Bielsa revalidated the leadership of Mislata four years ago with a support of 62.9%.
“The first thing is to make politics a useful instrument to help the people who need it the most, so that there is more social justice, more equality and to make the citizenry happier,” he considers, and for this, he highlights, a mayor You not only have to “solve problems” but also “get ahead” of them.
Listen to the social fabric
To do this, he not only believes it is necessary to listen to the social fabric, but also to integrate citizens into “a city candidacy.”
For this reason, he assures that in Mislata “all the neighborhood associations, of all kinds, women’s, parties, sports clubs, education” are part of his candidacy: “They feel part of the common project because of that dialogue and that closeness , and because in the end Mislata belongs to everyone”.
The phenomenon, he explains, means that in this Valencian town, which “had never” had governments with such large majorities, the same candidacy, in this case his, is voted for by “people of different ideologies, of different ways of think”.
“Today in Mislata we live without sectarianism, without fanaticism, without exclusion, simply with the common idea of improving,” Bielsa claims.
Like Abel Caballero, he recognizes the importance of image and, above all, of doing “young politics” but without forgetting the need to “strengthen and expand the social shield”, the objective of some of what he considers his star measures, such as the opening of a residence for the elderly or a new sports center.
“Politics is made on the street, with the people and by being part of everyone’s decisions, with participation, dialogue and consensus, forming a network that everyone feels part of,” defends Bielsa, who believes that this is the way “to defend a collective project and be able to apply it, which is the meaning of politics”. EFE