They say that in small towns everything is known – including what each one says about one – and that, for this reason, one does not speak openly to foreigners about what the neighbor is doing. It was difficult yesterday in Albudeite to discern if the first part of this statement was applicable to the municipality, precisely because of strict compliance with the second. And it is that, despite the fact that the news of the arrest of Isabel Peñalver, head of the PSOE list for mayor of this town, and two other party colleagues at the local level, had already spread like wildfire early in the morning late, nobody seemed to want to know anything more about the matter, at least publicly. “I have heard something”, was the most heard phrase yesterday from the mouth of its inhabitants, followed by “I prefer not to talk about these things, because I neither know nor am interested in them”.
A meteorological storm was still threatening in the Mula River region when the political DANA had already exploded. It was enough to set foot in the town to realize that something had already altered its usual tranquility. The public address system of a car announcing that the “great socialist rally to close the campaign” scheduled for yesterday was going to Friday afternoon, without giving more details about the reasons for the change.
The message pointed out the presence at the event not only of those investigated for an alleged electoral crime, but also that of the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures, María González Veracruz. “It is planned in that facility, which is where the old Civil Guard barracks was,” commented a group of retirees, some with a mischievous smile, adding that behaviors such as those being investigated “do not know anything.” “They simply should not exist,” they settled.
«Have you heard that they say they have bought votes, Marcos? I’ve been listening to it on the radio for a while. Are they going to put them in the urn now or what?», commented with a sarcastic tone from his car Ángel, the town priest, surprised to hear the name, among those investigated, of «one of the members of the management team of the school ». Meanwhile, his interlocutor gestured for him to remain silent, noticing the presence of journalists. «The media never come to see how beautiful this is and the good people who live here and now fill up to talk about these things; It’s a shame,” added the parish priest, while Marcos blamed the situation on the “clash between parties.”
“We only talk about ourselves”
Just a few meters from the parish, José Casales Lisón, the candidate for mayor of Albudeite for La Voz del Pueblo, a group of newly minted voters, distributed copies of his program and envelopes with his ballot door to door, something almost impossible to see in a city. Not even he, Peñalver’s rival in the next elections, wanted to make statements on the matter. “It has caught us out of the blue and we prefer not to say anything about anyone other than us, we can only point out that this town is abandoned,” he concluded.
Francisco showed fewer objections, who at the foot of the bar showed his closeness to the PP while pointing out that “they are all in hiding right now.” The truth is that at Peñalver’s home, as the occasional neighbor commented, there was a meeting that could be heard from the street. “Isabel is not going to say anything now,” commented the only spokesperson for that meeting who came out the door. He confirmed, however, that the nursing assistant will give explanations at today’s rally. It will be she herself who puts an end to that silence.
«It has been a surprise; Let the Justice work”, declares the mayor
García Martínez, when asked about the arrest of three members of the Socialist Party in the town. García Martínez, who regained the mayor’s office in 2021 in compliance with the pact signed with Ciudadanos two years earlier, assured that no complaint or suspicion from his party, the PP, had launched this investigation. “I knew that a few days ago there had been a raid in the area of the field for a drug issue and it seems that it is some calls intervened by the courts in the course of this investigation that have led to this branch of the operation,” he stated yesterday. The alderman at the exit of the Albuitero Town Hall.
García Martínez did not want to express himself in relation to whether he believes that these police and judicial actions can mark the outcome of the elections in the municipality on May 28. «It is a totally new circumstance in this town; We will let the Justice work, because we do not know more details about it, since, in addition, there is summary secrecy, ”he settled the first mayor. García Martínez, who has been mayor of the town since 2011, except for the period of time that the baton of command was in the hands of the orange -and later popular- José Luis Casales Bayona, has shared three legislatures in the Consistory with Isabel de los Dolores Penalver Neuhauser.
Three legislatures as mayor
The current head of the PSOE list – which was also in 2015 – entered the Albudeite City Council three legislatures ago and participated in the previous elections as number two of the socialist candidacy. She accompanies him as number 6 on the ballot, another of the arrested, Lorena Navarro. The third detainee, Héctor Martínez, is on the list for the Regional Assembly.
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