Ángel Corpa, founder of Jarcha, will head the list of España Vaciada in Castilla-La Mancha

The Empty Spain movement takes a step forward in Castilla-La Mancha and wants a seat in the regional courts of one of the autonomous communities most affected by depopulation.

They will do so with a candidacy headed by a visible face such as singer-songwriter Ángel Corpa, one of the founders of the Jarcha group and a native of Barajas de Melo, in the province of Cuenca, where he will run for the elections on May 28. .

Cuenca is for the moment the only province of Castilla-La Mancha that will have a candidacy under the umbrella of the Federation of Parties of Empty Spain, which includes other parties and platforms such as Cuenca Ahora —the one that Corpa will represent—, Teruel Exists, Aragon Exists, Soria Now!

or Jaén Deserves More.

The 70-year-old singer-songwriter has resided since 2009 in the municipality of Barajas de Melo, the town of 987 inhabitants where he was born.

Located in the Cuenca Alcarria, it is part of one of the most unpopulated areas of Spain together with the provinces of Soria and Guadalajara.

Corpa is known above all for having been one of the creators of Jarcha, a group without which it is difficult to understand the Spanish Transition musically speaking and who performed emblematic songs such as

(1976).

With 50 years of "uninterrupted activity dedicated to music" —as his website says—, he has also been the composer of other well-known songs such as

,

,

or

(for which he got the gold LP).

More than 50% of people born in Cuenca live outside the province

The Corpa environment assures EL PAÍS that its first links with the associations were born precisely in its municipality and in the rejection of a group of neighbors to the installation of a macrofarm.

From then on, this association thought of running in the municipal elections as a group of voters, but they were unable to gather the 15 signatures that were necessary.

Finally, they will do it under the umbrella of Cuenca Ahora, a platform that, aware of the singer-songwriter's potential pull, decided to offer him to lead his candidacy.

At first Corpa resisted, but they ended up convincing him.

The Jarcha group, in the seventies after receiving a gold record.

Corpa is the first from the left of those who are crouching. EFE

The movement of Empty Spain has become strong in other regions such as Castilla y León —where they entered with three deputies in the Regional Courts— or in Aragón —with a seat in the Congress of Deputies with Teruel Exists.

However, in Castilla-La Mancha they had not taken the step until now of running for elections.

The Cuenca Now platform is part of the Federation of Parties of Empty Spain and aspires to obtain one of the five seats that are at stake in the province of Cuenca.

He's going to have a tough time in a place that has never known a system other than a two-party system.

In the last regional elections, Cuenca was the only constituency where Ciudadanos - the third party with representation in the Cortes - did not obtain a seat, leaving the distribution with three deputies for the PSOE and two for the PP.

The Parliament of Castilla-La Mancha, with 33 seats, is one of the most underrepresented parliaments in Spain, with the same number of seats as La Rioja, despite the fact that this community has just over 300,000 inhabitants compared to more than two million of people living in Manchego territory.

Corpa's environment makes it clear that he takes on the challenge with great enthusiasm, but also aware of this situation, that the challenge is complicated.

Paralysis of macro-farms

Cuenca has now produced a political document that, under the banner of

, analyzes the situation in the province and proposes a series of measures to reverse depopulation, which is one of the main threats.

The diagnosis includes a piece of information: "more than 50% of people born in Cuenca live outside the province."

They also recall that the European Union has described Cuenca, Soria and Teruel as "sparsely populated territories" for having a density below 12 inhabitants per square kilometer.

Castilla-La Mancha has, since May 2021, a Law against Depopulation that seeks, through tax incentives, to fix inhabitants in rural areas.

In the absence of knowing the electoral program with which they will contest the regional elections in Castilla-La Mancha, España Vaciada mentions as concrete demands the halting of more projects to install macro-farms in the autonomous community.

He opposes the moratorium announced by the government of the socialist Emiliano García-Page, which he calls a "strainer", and believes that the advance of this type of intensive farming must be stopped.

The platform also does not agree with the increasing installation of wind or photovoltaic farms —it considers that greater regulation is necessary—, and advocates an improvement in infrastructure.

More information

Two new rulings endorse the cut in flow for the Tajo-Segura transfer and a third rejects it

The new candidacy calls for the completion of the Cuenca-Teruel and Cuenca-Albacete highway or the maintenance of the conventional bus lines, and rejects the closure of the Madrid-Cuenca-Valencia train line.

He also criticizes the Villar de Cañas radioactive waste storage project (ATC), promoted by the popular government of María Dolores de Cospedal and kept in a drawer by the socialist Executive of García-Page.

Nor does it support the toxic waste dump in Almonacid del Marquesado, a town where the mayor is the current president of the Cuenca Provincial Council, Álvaro Martínez Chana.

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