Last Sunday’s elections leave Soria ¡Ya! as the only parliamentary representative of the Empty Spain platform in Castilla y León. The success of the Soria candidacy, based on 20 years of social activism, had the cross of the currency on the electoral night of 13-F in the fact that the parties of Emptied Spain that presented themselves in Burgos, Palencia, Salamanca and Valladolid they did not get a seat. The Sorianos, however, have made it clear that their voice will represent all the uninhabited territories, also those provinces where the political leap did not materialize. It will thus continue in the wake of Teruel Exists, which has also brought to the central institutions the slogans of other communities that denounced its abandonment.
The three prosecutors obtained by Soria Now! They will listen and translate the needs of the rest of the associations —converted into political candidates— against depopulation into initiatives in the Parliament, explain those responsible. The gaze continues on that September 19, 2021, in which the national coordinator of the Emptied Spain opened to these local entities the possibility of attending the elections to fight in the institutions for their political objectives.
Vanessa García, one of the three elected deputies from Soria ¡Ya!, reiterates that they belong to this assembly “as a social movement”, and that not because they have kept their name from Soria do they stop pursuing the same goals as their colleagues from other territories. “Of course we will fight for the balance of all the provinces, as Teruel Exists has done since its seat in Congress. Any policy towards Emptied Spain will make us the main beneficiaries”, assures García, a lawyer by profession.
His next bench colleague in the Courts of Valladolid, the head of the list, Ángel Ceña, insists that Soria ¡Ya! will work to make visible the problems of the rest of the unpopulated areas, although it reiterates that this commitment will not imply abandoning the promises made by the electorate of the province: “The problems of unbalanced territorial development affect us all, we could perfectly present requests from Burgos,” he says .
Both maintain that the data is devastating and that they support the need to express the shortcomings of their province: Soria has a population density of less than nine inhabitants per square kilometer —a figure that for Europe implies a risk of depopulation—, half that of Zamora and quite a bit smaller than Burgos or Palencia.
The key, they point out, is that everything that is good for them will also benefit areas that suffer from a similar context. This is also the opinion of Verónica Santos, from Salamanca España Emptied, who did not achieve representation in the Cortes: “The three seats of Soria Now! They will serve to project the demands of all the provinces that are part of this movement. We are all grouped together.” Her partner at the head of the party in Palencia, Nieves Trigueros, classifies the Soriano case as a “great victory”: “Everything good that happens to some of us is good for the rest,” she celebrates.
Common denominator
The mirror where the groups of España Vaciada look at each other is in Teruel. Teruel Exists also won by far in its province the first elections in which it participated, with the exception that they were general and not autonomous. That 2019 served for the deputy Tomás Guitarte to expose rural issues in Congress such as the lack of telephone coverage or basic benefits. He even presented amendments to the General State Budgets prepared by Soria ¡Ya!, such as the provision of labor supplements for officials in depopulated areas.
Therefore, future Soria attorneys now exemplify, they can act as a representative of this type of requests or initiatives that may come from Zamora or Segovia. The shortcomings of certain areas of Spain transcend provincial borders and are focused, according to the thesis of Empty Spain, with a common denominator: the territorial imbalances between urban centers and rural or unpopulated areas.
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