The direction of Podemos in a town in Toledo will give the Mayor’s Office to the PP to unseat the PSOE from the City Council

The PSOE of Castilla-La Mancha has warned of an attempt to reach an agreement between Podemos and the PP in the Toledo municipality of La Guardia, and thus avoid a new socialist executive in the City Council, which has governed uninterruptedly in that town since 1995. Castilla-La Mancha has insisted that there is “nothing signed”. The town councils are constituted on Saturday and “negotiations are open until then.” Since the formation they have asserted on social networks that “they have never agreed with the PP” and that “they are not going to do it”, “neither in La Guardia nor anywhere”.

Party sources have gone a little further and have assured that in the event that an agreement is formalized with the PP, the elected councilors will be expelled. In the last municipal elections, the PP and PSOE obtained four councilors, while United We Can obtained 3 councilors. In the last legislature, the PSOE governed with an absolute majority. “Whoever agrees with the PP is outside of Podemos”, they have warned from the purple formation.

Although from the PSOE they point to Diego Pedraza, who is part of the team of the Podemos Organization Secretariat and is a native of La Guardia, as one of the negotiators, sources from the state leadership of the formation led by Ione Belarra completely disassociate him from this attempt to reach an agreement and ensure that a pact with the PP goes against the guidelines of Podemos.

The case takes another dimension: one of the councilors of @CAN that he is going to join with the PP that agrees with VOX (Diego Pedraza) it seems that he is an advisor to @MazelLilith Secretary of the national organization of Podemos. Something to say @ionebelarra? https://t.co/IeQHzWgoVW

—Sergio Gutierrez (@Sergio_GP) June 14, 2023

Pedraza was number five on the United We Can list in the town. The three elected councilors are Víctor Hernández Mora, María Carmen González Pedraza and Cristóbal Hernández Mora. From the Castilian-Manchego PSOE, the president of the Socialist Group in the acting regional courts, Fernando Mora, called on the formation led in Castilla La Mancha by José Luis García Gascón to explain his “against nature” and “incomprehensible” pact with the PP to govern in LaGuardia.

Podemos has responded to the PSOE through the same route. In a response to a tweet, he has denied any type of pact, calling it a “hoax”, although the number 2 of the Castilla-La Mancha socialists, Sergio Gutiérrez, has stated that he does not believe them.

I would like nothing more to be true. But the councilors of Podemos have canceled the meeting with the PSOE candidate (scheduled for today at 7:00 p.m.) because they already had an agreement with the coalition PP.

—Sergio Gutierrez (@Sergio_GP) June 14, 2023

The PP of Toledo, for its part, has indicated that it will not make statements in this regard.

The Podemos candidate confirms the negotiations and the Mayor’s Office will go to the PP

And meanwhile, the candidate of Unidas-Podemos for the Mayor of La Guardia (Toledo), Víctor Hernández, has confirmed in a message to the bases of the party that he intends to reach an agreement with the Popular Party for the investiture this Saturday .

In this message, to which Europa Press has had access, it would be agreed that “all important decisions be taken in the Governing Board”, where each party will have two members and in which there will be no casting vote by the mayoress in the event of a tie. . “That is, either it is taken unanimously or that decision is not adopted.”

The mayor’s office, by virtue of this pact, would go to the PP candidate, Marta Maroto –former president of Nuevas Generaciones in Castilla-La Mancha–. “We have managed to have a very important weight in the councils and all the important decisions will pass through our hands first. We have had to cede the mayoralty to Marta, the candidate of the Popular Party. This agreement is the maximum that we have been able to achieve after weeks of a lot of pressure from both sides and something like this would have been impossible with the PSOE”, Hernández justifies.

Likewise, within the agreement it is reflected “not to create a Department of Celebrations and that the parties are an agreement between the two groups to avoid personalities.”

“If it seems good to you, we will call an assembly for next week and we will explain the agreement in more detail. Thank you very much for your support”, concludes the purple candidate in this internal message.

Later and already in statements to Europa Press, the Podemos candidate defends that this movement responds to what they already promised in the electoral campaign. “In La Guardia, the PSOE has governed for 28 years in a row,” he recalls, adding that during the last term there have been numerous legal problems that, in his opinion, have been the responsibility of the socialist government team.

Hernández assures that the PSOE of La Guardia has “taken rights” from municipal workers, in some cases with dismissals in which there have been no compensation, or with extremes that have gone through employees “without the right to leave.”

Hernández questions the bases of the calls for public employment that have taken place in recent years in the Toledo town, “null and void.” Actions that he, according to him, emphasizes have been “dismantled in the courts.”

With all this, the intention of Hernández and his team is to “be consistent” with what he said in the campaign: “That the PSOE was not going to govern with our votes, because it had a disastrous management behind it and numerous doubts about the management of money for manage employment plans”. For all this, he insists: “We are not going to allow a PSOE government.”

Criticism of the apparatus of the Castilian-Manchego PSOE

Víctor Hernández has come out against the demonstrations from the PSOE that branded the pact as “anti-nature”.

“He should have been interested earlier in what was happening in La Guardia in his party instead of saying this before the full constitution of the City Council,” he added.

He also regrets that the interest in the news that now arises in view of his possible pact “is born as a result of Pedro Sánchez’s decision to call elections when the town councils are not yet constituted”, which, in his opinion, has condoned this type of negotiation. on a political level.

In any case, he insists that La Guardia “cannot fall on the side of the PSOE”, a party that also, according to his version, placed “salaries” at the main point of the negotiation when asking for a vote from the confluence. .

“They gave us a very low share of power beyond a mayoral tenure, but we wanted real powers, real management. And they told us that they were not going to change that, and that we could only make small adjustments, ”he added, recalling that his campaign has made it possible for the purple formation in this municipality to go from zero to three councilors.

I would accept expulsion from the party

Faced with the threat that they would be expelled from Podemos, Víctor Hernández is clear about it. “If complying with what has been said is so rare, and if we have to accept –the expulsion–, we will accept,” he said.

However, it abounds that the pact reached with the PP “is a good pact for the people”, so they would not understand “the decision” of Podemos to remove them from the formation.

“They have already told me that if we finally agree, they would expel us. We abide by it, although we do not understand it,” says Víctor Hernández, who insists that it is a pact that “will allow the people to advance” and that, even, “will allow the PSOE of La Guardia to regenerate.”

The Organization Secretariat prepares the expulsion files

The Secretary of Organization of the Castilian-Lamancha party, Teresa Navarro, has announced that “work is being done to avoid this pact and prepare a disciplinary file to remove the councilors from the party this Saturday if that pact is confirmed.” “In Podemos we have always worked and we are a guarantee of carrying out progressive policies, so we are not going to allow councilors from our party to agree with those who lead us to regress, to the destruction of the public sphere that protects and cares for us, to the loss of freedoms, the degradation of rights and worsening of people’s lives”, he stated.

Navarro has also made it clear that “the irregularities in the contracts of the employment plans uncovered and won in court, managing to recover labor rights for neighbors by the still councilors of La Guardia, framed in their fight against plugism, lack of transparency and the caciquismo of the PSOE in the municipality does not justify a pact with the right. No scenario justifies agreeing with the right for Podemos. Likewise, from Podemos Castilla-La Mancha we are going to continue working to end these practices in municipalities where the PSOE governs in our region, but never facilitating right-wing governments in any way ”, he remarked.

Finally, Navarro has asserted that “Podemos has never agreed with the right nor will it do so, neither in the Guardia nor anywhere. This is one of the greatest endorsements of this organization and we will always maintain it. It is one of the big differences that we have, for example, with the PSOE, which because of Susana Díaz and Page, with their abstention, gave the government to Rajoy and the PP in 2016. We are consistent with that, always being a guarantee of progressive policies and never agree with the PP is just the opposite. Therefore, if it is confirmed on Saturday, we will act immediately by removing these councilors ”.