Pontons or the PP recipe to go back

Tutusaus, in an act in the PP with several councilors, among them Reyes (second from the left) and Albiol.

”I make a list of 10 things that I am going to do in my mandate. I do not present a directory like Junts per Catalunya. And, of course, I've already done eight ”. Josep Tutusaus, 63, is the mayor of Pontons (Barcelona), a municipality of 600 inhabitants of the Penedès governed by the PP since 1999. With a population that on 14-F voted 64% for pro-independence parties and where Carles Puigdemont It swept Europeans in 2019 —43% of votes compared to 20.8% of the PP— Pontons is a

in Catalonia. With the recipe of day-to-day management and putting national politics aside, the PP has chained six victories. And that is the formula that the party wants to apply in the municipal elections to begin their reconstruction.

After suffering a colossal blow in 2019 - 67 councilors in Catalonia when in 2011 it added more than 400 - the PP miraculously entered the Barcelona City Council and evaporated in the metropolitan area. In Barcelona province, it achieved 38 councilors and triumphed in three municipalities: in Badalona (11), Castelldefels (8) and Pontons (4). Xavier García Albiol and Manu Reyes won in 2011, 2015 and 2019 but in the last two appointments they were displaced to the left. Albiol recovered the rod in 2020 after the resignation of Álex Pastor. “We have three examples. We won in a metropolitan municipality, in another tourist and another in the interior. We must bet on the proximity policy ”, says Reyes, new president of the Barcelona PP and former mayor of Castelldefels. “They came looking for me and I accepted. To win elections you have to have structure ”, says Tutusaus,general secretary of the PP of Barcelona.

With the municipal ones as an objective, the party has already begun to campaign for localities by installing tents.

“I will have been in over 30. There are no secrets.

Stepping on territory and being on the street.

Where we rule we repeat.

We manage well, ”says Tutusaus, who is mayor with an absolute majority.

He gives as an example that after the outbreak of the pandemic he provided his mobile number to the neighbors;

created a line of credit without interest to return in two years to those affected by ERTES - "the State has not helped us at all," he assures - or how it has increased social services from one to five.

Tutusaus attributes the fall of the PP to the "lies" that have been said about him and hopes to overcome.

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The question is whether Pontons' recipe can work on another scale.

A door-to-door in a municipality with 600 residents is not the same as in another with 200,000.

A deputy in the 1990s and mayor for three - he was deputy mayor since 1999 - Tutusaus believes that his formula is valid for large municipalities.

“There is a part that is identical: being from the municipality, knowing it, knowing how the City Council works;

that people know you, talk to them, because they usually give ideas, and listen ”.

He says.

And he adds: “I talk a lot with Joan, a pastor from the town.

He is the one who knows the most about the environment in all of Catalonia ”.

With only three deputies in the Parliament, the PP has been overturned by the

in a

which he hopes to overcome by being the benchmark of constitutionalism, taking advantage of the fall of Ciudadanos. With a constant presence on the Internet and in the neighborhoods, Albiol has distanced himself from national policy issues - "People stop me to ask for a container or for a broken streetlight, not for anything else," he explains - and avoided pronounce on the signatures against pardons by claiming that he is the mayor of all. In Pontons, the PP has also tried to isolate the City Council: the mayor says that motions that are not strictly municipal are not presented and that on October 1 nobody asked for a place to vote. "They did [half of the census] in a flat," he says. With door to door, Tutusaus calls the neighbors and explains what he promised and what he has done. Two things are missing from the list: running water to a group of houses and a road.

Motions to forgive municipal debt

Manu Reyes, Xavier García Albiol and Josep Tutusaus explained on Monday the plan of the PP to promote motions in the City Councils to get the Government to forgive the Consistories the 3,000 million euros of debt that the Treasury asks them for negative liquidation in the participation of the 2020 taxes. “If it is not forgiven, we propose to postpone the debt.

And that the healthiest municipalities pay it in 10 years, "said Tutusaus at a ceremony at the headquarters of the PP where Reyes and Albiol also took part.

Except for unforeseen events, the last two will repeat as mayoral in 2023. Tutusaus has not decided yet.

Since 1999, every four years Pontons appears as the only or one of the few mayoralties won by the PP.

"There are people from the town who tell me that that's why we have become famous," he jokes.