Nearly a thousand people attend the farewell ceremony in the Town Hall square in honor of councilor Juan José Cánovas, who died of Covid
Totana cried this Monday the loss of its mayor Juan José Cánovas, who died of Covid on Sunday. Nearly a thousand people packed the Plaza de la Constitución where the town hall is located where Cánovas managed, with his performance and dedication, to win the affection of colleagues, neighbors and public servants of the municipality.
From the first hour the square was filling with neighbors who came sad and silent to say goodbye to his figure. There they contemplated the more than 70 flower crowns from institutions, companies, groups and families that adorned the facade of the City Hall and the Santiago parish in honor of the deceased while they commented on anecdotes in small groups and highlighted “what a good person she was.” “The best mayor this town has ever had,” said one of them.
The episcopal vicar of the Lorca area, Francisco Fructuoso, accompanied by the parish priests of Santiago and the Three Hail Marys, Francisco José Fernández and Pedro Hernández, officiated the funeral in the presence of the entire municipal corporation, and local and regional authorities, such as the president regional Fernando López Miras, the delegate of the Government, José Vélez; the president of the Regional Assembly, Alberto Castillo, the councilors Marcos Ortuño and Isabel Franco, or the president of the Federation of Municipalities and mayor of Bullas, María Dolores Muñoz. The hearse arrived at 10 o’clock at the door of the town hall, to face the door of the building from which Juan José Cánovas has directed the future of the municipality for the last six years. There, his colleagues left the balcony of the Mayor’s office open in his honor, “as he always had it. If we saw the open balcony, we already knew that Juanjo was working, ”said workers from the Consistory.
Relatives of Cánovas mourn his loss, this Monday. /
“A good person”
Francisco Fructuoso was full of praise for the alderman. «We all know that he has been a person of very firm convictions, who has tried to translate into his works, but we all also know that, above all, Juan José has been a good person, a good person, a simple man, open to dialogue and close. A person who has tried to go through life doing good and, in his personal commitment, always opting for the weakest, most needy people.
The vicar, who was pastor of the church of Santiago in Totana for ten years, recalled his meetings with the alderman in the Calabaza bar, where he always starred in “kind, affable” meetings. Fructuoso stressed that Juan José “always looked directly at the disease”, the leukemia with which he struggled in recent years, which “never prevented him from forgetting himself and going out to make those talents and gifts he had available to others” .
The eldest son of Cánovas, Raúl, also intervened in the act on behalf of the family, who thanked the displays of affection and respect “in these last 27 days of such complicated struggle” arriving “from all over Totana, the Region of Murcia and even from outside of Spain. Raúl wanted to extol the fighting character of his father, “who has always looked out for the people”, an “exemplary” father. “You will not be able to see a better mayor in Totana for many years,” said Raúl, starting the closed applause of the square.
Finally, José Luis Álvarez Castellanos, leader of the United Green Left of the Region of Murcia (IUVRM), and Alfonso Cayuela, a close friend of the deceased, intervened. The IUVRM coordinator stressed how all the messages of condolence received by the party “highlight the closeness, tenacity, honesty and work capacity of the mayor.” “They are not topics. So many people can’t be wrong and so much coincidence can’t be a coincidence,” he said.
Álvarez Castellanos affirmed that the alderman “has dignified politics” with work and a career of more than forty years “intimately linked to the commitment to serve others and the fight for social justice.”
His friend Alfonso Cayuela also spoke, “one of the greatest, most important people this town has ever had.” «I remember when on the night of the first democratic elections, in this same square, he took me by the arm and told me ‘yesterday I was discharged from the military in Tarifa, from Monday we will see each other and you have me for whatever it takes’ . He was able to get into the most stubborn mud in order to get what he believed was the improvement for his neighbors, “he said.
«The hard slap, the invisible and homicidal ax blow, the brutal push that Miguel Hernández sang has brought down the so many times victorious of a thousand battles: some, political; others, for life in the face of the terrible disease of cancer«, Álvarez Castellanos recalled. “He emerged victorious from all of them, although not unscathed, in fact the consequences of this previous disease have predisposed him with hardly any defenses against the virus that continues to disrupt our lives,” he asserted. “You will have to carry it forever in your memory.”
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