The former vice president of the Junta de Andalucía Juan Marín has been out of politics for two months and assures that he does not regret the decision he made when he resigned from the presidency of Ciudadanos in the autonomous community. His unmitigated failure in the Andalusian elections on June 19, in which his candidacy lost the 21 deputies that he had achieved in 2018, left him knocked out. He confesses that he never thought that Ciudadanos would disappear from the regional Parliament. He was convinced that he would manage to retain enough seats at least to be able to form his own parliamentary group, which would have made him continue as head of Ciudadanos in Andalusia. But it was not like that and he immediately resigned from all charges against him, as he had previously promised. Since then he meditates what to do, without pressure or stress. The decision, he says, will be made “in September”.
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According to Marín in conversation with elDiario.es, job offers are not lacking. In fact, the president of the Board, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, even offered him to remain in his Government, but he He rejected the idea because that “change of jacket” did not seem correct to him. At least as long as he continues to be a member of Ciudadanos. The door is still open to occupy another position. Although he does not detail what it is about, the former Andalusian leader of the formation that now calls himself “liberal” explains that he has a couple of tempting offers in the private company, the last of them being the most advantageous because it would allow him to live in Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz), his native land, and being close to his two children with whom he admits that he has not been able to spend as much time as he would have liked to be involved in politics these last seven intense years.
But Marín is also considering accepting some of the positions that the president of the Andalusian Government has offered him and that he does not want to reveal either because he believes that it would be breaking the confidentiality that his private conversations require. One of the positions that was rumored was that of deputy to the Ombudsman, where he would meet Virginia Millán, wife of Fran Hervías, former secretary of the Citizens’ Organization and muñidor, after his jump to the PP during the hostile takeover bid launched from Genoa against his old party. Despite having been the one who supported him so that he could present himself in the primaries in 2015 to opt for the candidacy for the Junta de Andalucía, the relationship between the two ended fatally. Marín pointed to him as the leaker of an audio of his in which, in a meeting with his parliamentary group, he criticized the approval of public accounts in an election year. “Those who dedicate themselves to doing trash politics should continue. I am certainly not going to play that, “he assured then, accusing Hervías of trying” to liquidate Ciudadanos in Andalusia and throughout Spain.
Various offers from the Andalusian president
Faced with so many dimes and diretes that run since he resigned from all his positions, the former vice president of the Andalusian Government neither confirms nor denies anything. He also does not reveal what other offers he has from the Chairman of the Board, whom he considers his “friend”. The Government is already formed and Rocío Blanco has remained in it, an independent signed by Ciudadanos who is going to deal with the Ministry of Employment, Companies and Self-Employed Workers. Some of the former positions in the communication area who worked in the councils led by the orange party also remain. “It’s that they were very good and valid people,” defends Marín.
The former Andalusian vice president, who will turn 60 at the end of the year, does not rule out anything, while some former colleagues see him even taking that step arm in arm with the PP ahead of the 2023 municipal elections. He has already anticipated that if he decided to accept a position public would abandon the militancy in the formation of Arrimadas, although not “its liberal values”. However, it is also no secret that he has never dismissed the possibility of a merger between the two parties. As he has revealed in a recent interview with Diario de Sevilla, it was a possibility that he spoke with Arrimadas. But the party leader never liked the idea and they finally discarded it, assuring that they were “two different projects” with some ideas in common but with many more differences. Since it was something that didn’t work out, she prefers not to regret it.
In the private sector, Juan Marín has worked as a businessman. He began studies in Labor Relations, but did not finish them and went to work in the jewelry and watch shop that his family owned. He also chaired his hometown Merchants Association. After studying an opposition, he went to work in a Savings Bank.
Marín began his career in politics when he was barely 21 years old. In 1983 he appeared on the municipal lists of Alianza Popular but was not elected. After an ephemeral stint in the Andalusian Party, in 2006 he founded Ciudadanos Independientes de Sanlúcar, a party with which he ran for election, achieving three acts of councilors and allying himself with the PSOE to govern the municipality. He was deputy mayor for Economic Development and responsible for the areas of Commerce, Business, Tourism, Sports and Youth.
Years later, in 2011, he had his first contacts with the party then led by Albert Rivera, taking charge of its implementation in Andalusia. In 2015 he began his formal career in Ciudadanos with the help of Fran Hervías, who encouraged him to run for the primaries to be a candidate for the Andalusian Government. As the other applicants did not obtain enough endorsements, Marín was appointed to the position. His candidacy won nine seats in the Andalusian Parliament. In that legislature he opted to support the investiture of the leader of the PSOE, Susana Díaz, with whom he maintained a good relationship until she decided to advance the regional elections a few months.
In that second appointment with the polls on December 2, 2018 Citizens rose to 21 deputies. Then he turned his back on his former PSOE partners who, although they dropped significantly in votes, won the elections again. He supported Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla’s PP by forming a coalition government of which he was vice president.
These days, while deciding whether or not to return to politics, he has boasted about his famous torrijas on a television program and has once again taken refuge in one of his passions: volleyball, a sport in which he has been a coach and technician for local teams.
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