The dizzying conversion to the center right of the ultra mayor of Los Santos de la Humosa signed by Ayuso

Soler’s ignorance illustrates the isolation of Los Santos de La Humosa, a watchtower where you can breathe a buried neighborhood tension that manifests itself sporadically with episodes of reactionary violence that some older people still link to quarrels dragged on from the Civil War. Nothing ever happens in Los Santos, until it does. For example, the two socialist mayors that the town has had in democracy, Daniel Meco (1987-1996) and José Ignacio Fernández (2011-2019), suffered attacks at parties, when the wine runs and bad blood boils. The first, who entered when the water was still coming to the town in cisterns, had transferred the cross of the fallen to the cemetery (with the support of the priest). They punched him. The second said that the bullring was in poor condition and had to be fixed for a while with a laptop. Stones rained down.

There are a few families, but they are extreme, extreme […]. And the children come out more radical than the parents

“It is a pity. There are a few families, but they are extreme, extreme […]. And the problem is that the children come out more radical than the parents, ”says a neighbor, who she prefers not to give her name because she has grandchildren and does not want trouble, in such a small place. The town is linked to Alcalá, and at the head of the region an extreme right-wing nucleus survives, with whom the young Polo came into contact, whose family tended more to the left. In 2016, when he was already a councilor, he advocated an exclusive Spanishness with proposals such as withdrawing social aid for foreigners. In 2019 he was elected mayor with the votes of PP and Vox (the PSOE lacked five votes for an absolute majority).

Discussed balance

His balance is discussed in the town. He dissolved the local police and the civil protection group and settled in documentary obscurity, according to his rival in May, Carolina Urtasun (PSOE), who points out that it is impossible to access most municipal files. The two mayors of the PP who voted for him left the corporation shortly after, and with the one from Vox the clashes reached the prosecutor’s office, with a complaint to the mayor Daniel Moreno for a supposedly irregular invoice. Moreno blamed what happened last summer on Polo’s fear that he would subtract votes. This year he does not reply to elDiario.es.

We will be advised and supported by our beloved president Isabel Díaz Ayuso

Polo himself does not respond either, not even when approached at the presentation of his candidacy, full of twenty-somethings, also with some old companion from Spain 2000 and one of the surviving councilors of the PP of 2019. “We will be advised and supported by our dear President Isabel Díaz Ayuso”, was the only thing that slipped, indirectly, about her political evolution. In 2021 she had already stood out in the municipal plenary session of the neo-Nazi demonstration for Chueca, promoted precisely by Spain 2000.

“Better to change parties than to change principles”

The protagonist is mute, the supporters who attend the act of the new PP give their opinion. “It is better to change parties than to change principles and the lion is not as fierce as they paint it,” sums up María José Escanellas. “If he were radical as they say, I would not let my son hang out with him,” says Mauricio Peñalver, one of the oldest. He shares with a third party, Juan López, that the media generate “anger” and not in the same way with the right-handed and left-handed wingers. On the same plane as Spain 2000 would be “the ETA and the Barcelona”, they say, in a tone that does not invite a calm debate.

The bad environment transcends even earthly power. Even the priest, who had not been there for two years, announced his sudden departure last month, after trying to bring order to the Brotherhood of the Virgen de la Soledad, which has no statutes. “They called the Civil Guard once she parked on the yellow line,” says a neighbor about her detractors.

Going down from the house of culture, on the way to the exit of Los Santos, the anonymous testimonies return; again the fear of being identified in a small place appears. “I have a strange name and they were going to know me,” says the mother of two children under the age of 10, who largely disagrees with those gathered above and states that the PP’s maneuver with Polo, as far as she is concerned, may have the opposite of the desired effect. “People voted for him because he was from the town, but he has done everything less to look out for the town. It has been a total decline, ”she maintains.

Attacks on anti-bullfighting activists

Precisely there, in Santos de la Humosa, two anti-bullfighting activists from the International Vegan Strike Group collective were beaten, insulted and dragged through the town’s bullring on May 2. Minutes before, they had jumped into the ring to protest the “animal torture.” The images show the violence exerted against the two activists, a man and a woman. The woman ended up being dragged by number two of the PP of Los Santos de la Humosa, according to the Chain Beingwhile the rest of the attendees in the square insulted her.

The video was released by the animal organization. And the images show the brutality with which the public goes against the activists. Several people from the public jump into the square: the man receives blows and kicks. The woman is beaten and dragged by a corpulent man while the rest of the square calls her a “whore”.