Manuela Carmena’s official endorsement of Rita Maestre’s candidacy for mayor of Madrid arrived this afternoon. “Hopefully she will be the new mayoress”, the former councilor said at an event in the Moratalaz district to present the Más Madrid project to build community residences for the elderly in the neighborhoods. “You have to vote for goodness”, said Carmena, who has declared herself “fed up” with the fact that in politics “what is valued is malism and lies” instead of “truth, sincerity and effectiveness”.
Rita Maestre signs the engineer who successfully deployed the ‘Bicimad’ in Valladolid and revolutionized its mobility
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“I’m out, I’m not with anyone or anything,” the mayor had warned at the beginning of her speech between 2015 and 2019. Her departure after failing to be re-elected caused a schism in her candidacy that ended, after the refounding of Más Madrid with Maestre at the helm, with the cutting of Recupera Madrid, theoretically more akin to the former mayor’s departure, but which has been losing steam and today barely survives, with two mayors. That is already behind, to a certain point; Carmena is suspicious today of “acronyms” and “structures so covered in ideology and so little practical sense.” “Perhaps one day we will not only put the ballot for an electoral acronym, but for a specific project that we want to see done and in which perhaps not only an electoral group or a party will be involved,” she pointed out.
My goodness, how we miss you, Manuela
Present at the event were the candidate Maestre and the party’s candidate for the presidency of the Community of Madrid, Mónica García. Both were full of praise for Carmena. “My goodness, how we miss you, Manuela”, exclaimed Maestre, who has said that he has learned a lot from Carmena’s way of doing politics, more “as a meeting space” than as a “fight between each other”. . With the same celebratory way, García has indicated: “I have started to write adjectives about Manuela and the page has fallen short.”
Independent senior residences
The presence of Carmena, 79, was also explained by the theme of the event, the Más Madrid project to build up to 100 residences for the elderly who discard the current model of internment and are committed to allowing community and independent life, as explained by the deputy spokesperson for the municipal group and member of the Maestre candidacy, Cuca Sánchez. In the case of Moratalaz, they would be homes of about 45 square meters with access to a kitchen, built on a plot integrated into a square in the urban grid.
Good politics is not that of Twitter nor that of the zasca nor the politics of disqualification
Another veteran of neighborhood politics, Félix López-Rey, who is part of Maestre’s list for the May elections, has stressed the importance of residences being close to neighborhoods and not implying “parking while alive” for the elderly away from where they have resided most of their lives. The neighborhood leader has been promoting a similar project of apartments for the elderly in Orcasitas. “We intend to make some buildings where there is a square where there are restaurants and bars, where our grandchildren can go with the girls there to have a drink and at the same time go to see their grandfather and not be in a gloomy place,” he described.
There were hardly any mentions of political rivals during the event, in line with the proactive tone that Más Madrid is now committed to. “Good politics is not that of Twitter or that of zasca nor the disqualification policy; it is the one that respects people and enhances all their abilities”, said Maestre, who has defended that the deaf work of Más Madrid in the opposition has led the formation to have a project to govern. García ended by transforming the motto of May 1968 to explain the substance of his proposal, perhaps less poetic: from “let’s be realistic, let’s ask for the impossible” to “let’s be dreamers, let’s do the possible.”
