Friday, June 16, 2023, 4:16 p.m.
Fourteen months of frenzy and, in the words of Carolina Gracia, “many sleeplessness” to achieve a list of achievements that leave the current mayor with a “very positive” feeling. “It was difficult to do more in 14 months,” said the councilor in the balance of her government that she offered this Friday.
A speech in which there has been time to express his achievements, excuse political and technical errors, and above all, the most repeated word, thank his councilors and his trusted staff, who will leave tomorrow after the foreseeable inauguration of the popular candidate, Pepe Vegara, of the command baton that Gracia inherited from Emilio Bascuñana in last year’s motion of no confidence.
The current councilor expressed that she considers the three main objectives that “grosso modo” set for herself fulfilled: “to promote governability, unblock management and normalize relations with the Generalitat.”
Precisely “unblock” has been the fetish word of this last PSOE-Ciudadanos executive. Thus, Carolina Gracia, supported by the councilors Luis Quesada, Carmen Moreno, Guillermo Cánovas and Ángel Luis Muñoz, listed what, in her opinion, have been those doors left behind by her team.
To begin with, as a result of extraordinary cooperation from the Generalitat and the unprecedented presence of the president himself on many occasions, Gracia claims to have achieved, with the help of his supporters in Valencia, the purchase of the asylum, the expansion of the Vega Baja Hospital, the purchase of the Palace of the Marqués de Rafal and “coordination in matters of water”.
Following this line, Gracia has stressed that “in these 14 months there are more works underway in Orihuela than in the last seven years” and pointed out the old courts, the Rubalcava Palace, the Caja de Monserrate or the Twin Ferris Wheels.
He also did not escape talking about the happy budgets, still extended since 2018. Despite not having fulfilled what was sold as the great promise of the executive after the motion of censure, he warned, his government has carried out contracts such as the maintenance of the colleges or the OTA. Just as, he said, the staff of Street Cleaning and Local Police have increased, remnants have been removed for the Palmeral occupational center and celebrated two editions of the Consumption Bonus.
The socialist councilor, in short, appreciates that she is leaving a “more alive” city with projects such as the first edition of the Carnival or the LGTBI Pride parade. At the same time that she, she emphasizes, they have further magnified the figure of Miguel Hernández with the appointment as Adoptive Son of Joan Manuel Serrat or the location next to the Salesas Campus of a plaza and commemorative plaque in honor of the poet’s wife, Josefina Manresa.
«We are aware that the polls have spoken and that, if everything develops as expected, tomorrow there will be a new mayor who will be accompanied by a new government team, who we hope will know how to keep up with the pulse of this last year, and of course, to continue shielding rights in terms of education and public health, in terms of equality, diversity and respect for all the people of Orihuela”, has commissioned the next mayor Carolina Gracia.
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