The former president of the central government, who misses more “good sense and rigor” in current politics, brings together several hundred people in Murcia for the signing of his latest book
That between Mariano Rajoy and the Region of Murcia there is a special ‘feeling’ no one can deny. In this land he has always been received with open arms, he has been entertained, sheltered … And what happened this Wednesday is one more proof of that. The former president of the Government of Spain was returning to Murcia to sign copies of his new book ‘Politics for adults’, and the response was massive.
More than two hundred people waited patiently waiting in line on the first floor of El Corte Inglés on Murcia’s Gran Vía for the arrival of their idol shortly before 6.30 pm. “I have been here since four in the afternoon and we do not stop selling books,” said one of the shop assistants next to several dozen volumes stacked on a cart. The employee hadn’t remembered another editorial bombshell like that since … she barely had to think about it for a few seconds: “Since he was here with his previous book.” It was on February 5, 2020, in the same place, and he spent three hours signing ‘A Better Spain’.
Even before the saleswoman from the department store, a young man in his twenties arrived who is first in line. “I’ve been here since three thirty,” he says with his copy under his arm. Three hours of waiting because “he did a great job as president, he did a very good management and he is a good person,” he explains.
Those who make up the row are dominated by those over fifty and sixty years of age, but there are also many young people. The queue of people extends throughout the plant and attracts the attention of the rest of the customers. When they find out the reason for so much expectation, some answer with surprise: “Rajoy?”; and others with admiration: «! Rajoy!».
Private dinner with López Miras
The former president arrives accompanied by the general secretary of the PP of the Region, Juan Miguel Luengo; the Minister of the Presidency and Tourism, Marcos Ortuño; the director general of Local Administration and vice-secretary of Organization of the party, Francisco Abril, and the former mayor of Murcia, José Ballesta. Among those waiting in the signature room there are more senior popular positions, such as the deputy and spokesperson for the Murcian PP, Miriam Guardiola. The first signature and dedication is for Luengo: «For my colleague and friend, Mayor of San Javier (…), with much affection ‘.
The president of the Region of Murcia, Fernando López Miras, is in Madrid at a public event and will meet with Rajoy later. It is planned that they dine together in a restaurant in Murcia.
The queue stretches across the entire floor, descends one of the stairs and, at the end, Ramón Luis Valcárcel waits his turn
His two terms as President of the Government of Spain, between 2011 and 2018, were not extraordinarily satisfactory for the Region, but with him as a candidate for La Moncloa the PP reaped the best electoral results in its history in Murcia. It was in the general elections of 2011 and the popular ones received 64.8% of the votes and took eight of the ten seats at stake. Not even Ramón Luis Valcárcel, who ruled the Region for almost twenty years with absolute majorities, reached such approval levels. The PP, with Rajoy again at the forefront of the electoral poster, would once again win the following general elections in the Region, those of 2015 and 2016, but with much lower percentages of votes. However, after leaving the presidency of the Government and the party in 2018, as a result of the motion of censure presented by Pedro Sánchez, the PP also began to lose elections in the Region. In the general elections of April 2019, the PSOE was the most voted by Murcia after almost thirty years; a month later, the PSOE won again in the regional elections, and in the general elections that were repeated in November of that same year, Vox was the winning party.
The last one on the line
Rajoy skilfully avoids questions of national politics when asked by journalists and limits himself to commenting on his book. It laments the spread of populism in Western countries and is committed to a return to rationality and dialogue. “In the book there is an appeal to good sense and rigor, something that unfortunately we do not have in the quantities necessary in Spanish politics,” he says.
Half an hour after the start of the copy signing, the queue of people is even longer and descends one of the stairs to the ground floor. At the end of it, the former president of the regional government Ramón Luis Valcárcel awaits his turn, along with his wife Charo Cruz and his sister María Isabel, former councilor of the Murcia City Council. He has not wanted to assert his stripes, even if they are old, or ask for favors and he prefers to wait, even for several hours. “I do it out of friendship, and because his books always have interesting things,” he says.
.