It was an open secret, which surely would have become official much sooner if Pedro Sánchez had not brought forward the general elections, which forced Fernández Vara to back down in his intention to abandon politics the day after having assumed as an electoral “failure”. the results of the PSOE of Extremadura on 28-M, the worst in the history of their party.
That there was going to be a great dispute for the succession was as evident as the fact that the mayor of Villanueva de la Serena, Miguel Ángel Gallardo, who was also president of the Provincial Council, was on the exit ramp. Everything was planned in the calendar, with the celebration of a congress of Extremadura socialists in October to name a new leader in Extremadura to replace the current baron from Extremadura, who has also been ‘resurrected’ thanks to the lack of agreement between María Guardiola and Vox Extremadura.
In fact, Vara has already announced that he will not miss the opportunity and, although the numbers do not give him, he is going to appear for the investiture in the Extremadura parliament, which will also serve as an electoral act a few days before the general elections.
However, and within this context of uncertainty, whoever stands as successor has not waited for the situation to become clearer, or for it to become even more convoluted, and today he has taken a step forward, without hesitation. “Vara should have taken a step back to leave behind a more exciting project,” he assured in an interview in the regional newspaper Hoy. In his opinion, he should not have run for re-election.
This reflection being already critical, by directly stating that the president of the Board is worn out, it also points to him as the baron who has stuck the most to Pedro Sánchez in this legislature, not like Emiliano García-Pague or Javier Lambán, a position that, in silence, it was commented with astonishment in the socialist ranks, also the high positions, during these years. “He has been wrong in not publicly criticizing some government policies that hurt us.”
And it is that Vara, for example, came to justify near the electoral campaign the pacts of the President of the Government with Bildu. That is where his attachment to Sánchez came from. And he ended up paying for it at the polls: “We have failed to believe that defending the region in the offices, without making noise, was loyalty,” Gallardo, who has obtained six absolute majorities in Villanueva de la Serena, comments in the interview. “People have thought that we have bowed to the interests of the party at the national level,” he stresses and emphasizes: “We have clearly failed to present a project that, being good for Extremadura, seemed to be remote-controlled from other sites. That is not real, but it also It has to look like it.”
And finally, he adds: “I am one of those who think that he should have taken a step back. But not so that others take a step forward, but rather so that he would win out of the government. When one wins, he has the possibility of offering one more project exciting and a sweeter exit”.
Meanwhile, and after hearing these statements, Guillermo Fernández Vara, has assured this Friday in an interview with Canal Extremadura that he is convinced that Gallardo is not running for his succession: “That is not the intention of Miguel Ángel -Gallardo in any case – nor of any other companion”. And he added: “I can assure you because we talk almost every day and that is the case,” he reiterated.
Fernández Vara has stated that Gallardo’s words have not surprised him and are nothing new. “He has said it internally on several occasions and to me personally,” he has said. “We are a party in which people have an opinion and express it freely and without any intention of doing harm,” added Fernández Vara.
In addition to Gallardo, in the pools for the succession of the Extremaduran baron are the mayor of Mérida, Antonio Rodríguez Osuna, the president of the Assembly, Blanca Martín, or the Minister of Health, José María Vergeles.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project