Girls in dresses of long shots and low prices, gold earrings and hairstyles. Guys in suit jacket, tie and bow tie. White and blue balloons, curtains of silver strips, excited parents: there is graduation at the Menéndez Tolosa Institute in La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz). But the focus shifts as soon as Spain's most voted mayor shows up the door. Juan Franco, leader of the municipal party La Línea 100x100, greets left and right, like a local celebrity. He congratulates the parents, but they return the congratulations with more enthusiasm for that surprising 75.18% of votes that have led him to take 22 of the 25 councilors of the plenary, one more than in 2019.
"Mayor, congratulations, could I take a selfie with you?" It's because I want to label him, huh.
- Of course, there would be more! Come, give me the mobile.
The linense Almudena Pérez does not release pledge of whether she voted for him, but neither does she hide the illusion that has just made her leave the graduation of her offspring with a photo of her councilor. His partner, the Gibraltarian Steven Cano, does not mince words: "If I could, I would have voted for him without hesitation." She laughs and provides a clue: "If he has achieved that result, it is because he gives him what people want. He's got the right spot." Perez is right. The agenda of this afternoon of post-election Thursday includes inauguration of local, delivery of diplomas of the classroom of majors of the UNED and the aforementioned graduation. It seems as if the campaign has not ended because it is unusual for a mayor of a municipality of 62,900 inhabitants with so many open fronts – unemployment above 29%, drug trafficking problems, Brexit entrenched in Gibraltar ... – to have time and desire to go to events like this, but the mayor swears that he has been doing it since he arrived, eight years ago.
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"I go to the graduations of the five institutes every year, also at the beginning of the course and I give them a talk about the city model. The campaign for 2027 started last Monday and it's not that I have a hidden sinister plan, it's just that I'm already on the street. What is not worth is to do it only when you are 15 days away from the elections, then it is too late, "says Franco. Even so, in the last campaign he burst a red Puma shoe with the 202 kilometers he walked. He himself narrated it in his social networks, one of the spaces in which he feels so comfortable that he even dared to campaign in the metaverse. There and in his already famous cafes – in which he summons in a place and an hour to the neighbors who want to go – he has been willing to sell his management. From the new stadium, to the bullring, with the backdrop of an adjustment plan and an inherited debt that he took with 177 million and that this year will remain at 126.
The combination of a lot of street, people skills, management of social networks – to the point of being inspiration for the Twitter account of humor @JFrancoEnjoyers – and management is not something that separates him from other popular mayors such as the socialist Abel Caballero, in Vigo, whom he has surpassed in percentage of votes. What has led Franco, a 47-year-old lawyer and municipal official, to distance himself from the rest is to constantly recognize that his municipality suffers from problems of social inequality and poverty that lead it to have the worst life expectancy behind Ceuta (79.3 years). He was also the first and only mayor of the Campo de Gibraltar to warn that the area was suffering from the scourge of drug trafficking, to the point of intoxicating the younger generations of disadvantaged neighborhoods: "We could not continue to bow our heads. We said 'it does happen here and we have a serious problem that needs to be addressed'. Part of it has begun to be solved with the security plan, but nothing has been done about the social aspect. There are those who stop me asking for work and tell me 'I'm going to have to end up getting into the mess [for the narco] and I don't want to.' That's very sad."
I screamed pic.twitter.com/OmWrAISnM7
— Juan Franco enjoyers (@JFrancoEnjoyers) March 10, 2023
Franco has been able to sneak that raw, pragmatic message and summarized in powerful headlines in all the national media that have wanted to listen to him. The opposition of the PSOE and IU spoiled him in the campaign and accused him of victimhood. Now, the re-elected mayor reaffirms that "people have valued the recognition of the problem." The only blemish of the past 28-M is that the town is still installed in a high abstentionism: 53.36% of the 50,000 neighbors with the right to vote stayed at home. It remains to be seen if he would be able to get those linenses out of apathy, if he managed to carry out one of his most viral occurrences: trying to turn La Línea into an autonomous city to achieve a differentiated status of the State in the face of its problems and its geographical situation as a border city. The idea has not gone beyond the attempt of popular consultation, rejected by the Government, and now in the Supreme, after the appeal of the Linense City Council. "The alternative is that we continue as we are. I don't get anything the same, but I try. I'm not going to let my people die of disgust, I refuse," he says.
Although he does not want to abandon that front, Franco now adds another that he will resolve in the coming days. So overwhelming has been his victory, that it has become a key to government, both for the Diputación de Cádiz, and in the Commonwealth of Municipalities of Campo de Gibraltar. The mayor's intention is to be flattered by the PP – with whom he already agreed to reach the Mayor's Office in 2015 – as well as by the PSOE – whom he supported in the previous mandate of the Diputación. "You don't have to be Machiavelli, we can rule with anyone. I see him nearby with both of them. It is not an auction, but there it goes, "recognizes the councilor, determined to be cajoled by the party that promises more investments for a city that has been lacking investment for years by the Junta de Andalucía and the Government.
Just an hour before appearing in the courtyard of the Menéndez Tolosa Institute for his umpteenth graduation, Franco melts into a hug with Carmen Bueno, this year's student of the UNED to whom the mayor is going to give him a diploma of attendance. "I was so clear that I was going to vote for him that the other election envelopes I received at home, I didn't even open them, to the trash they were. He cares about the city and does something, the old ones did nothing," explains the 73-year-old. The mayor appreciates the affection, but does not hide the "vertigo" that gives him so many hopes placed in him. "Success can't end up blinding you," he blurts out almost as a self-recommendation.
