“From this moment on, Seville begins to operate with an extended budget.”
This is how the mayor of Seville, the popular José Luis Sanz, settled this Tuesday the more than three months of negotiations to try to move forward with the municipal accounts.
Finally, the councilor has confirmed the fragility of his minority situation in the Seville City Council, given the impossibility of obtaining enough votes for his approval.
The closure of Vox that demanded to enter the local government in exchange for its support and the opposition of the PSOE and Podemos-IU will force the PP to govern the budgets approved in 2023 by the previous mayor, the socialist Antonio Muñoz.
In mid-November of last year, Sanz presented budgets of 1,031 million - not counting the items for municipal companies - which he defined as "without ideology" or "red lines", to try to get at least the abstention of some of the parties. in the opposition.
There were no unacceptable issues
a priori
, but from the beginning of the negotiations Vox made it a condition to enter the municipal government, driven by the example of Valencia, where the PP finally agreed to let the extreme right party enter as a toll to approve the municipal accounts.
Sources close to the mayor warned then that he was not at all in favor of this situation being replicated in Seville, but they recognized that it was a decision that would be made in the national leadership of both parties.
Finally, Sanz has not given in to Vox's demands and has chosen to follow the strategy that José Luis Almeida already applied in Madrid for two years to overcome the blockade imposed by Santiago Abascal's party in the Spanish capital and will have to carry out his projects through budget modifications.
The Seville councilor has blamed this situation not only on Vox's condition of entering the municipal government, but also on the refusal of the rest of the opposition parties to "contribute ideas" to solve the city's problems.
However, it has been the PSOE that in recent months has supported the mayor's municipal team by carrying out the tax ordinances and budget modifications necessary to approve the increase in the water rate and the maintenance of parks and traffic lights (thank you to the abstention of the socialist municipal group).
However, the PSOE already warned that this support – which also allowed Sanz not to have to depend on Vox – would not be transferred to the budgets.
From the first moment they opposed the allocations intended to tackle the debt - because they were unrealistic - their reduction in matters of women's policies and the elimination of those allocated to Democratic Memory.
Muñoz's party delivered a document with proposals to the PP in January to which they have had no response.
“The responsibility for not having a budget lies with the municipal government,” the former socialist councilor warned on Tuesday, who recalled that when his party governed as a minority, in the last two terms, he always managed to agree on the accounts, either with Ciudadanos—like those of 2023―, good with Podemos (except for those of 2015 that were also extended).
“Budgets are not only numbers, but they hide the city model,” Muñoz also noted, making it very clear that his formation was not going to give the mayor “a blank check for crazy ideas,” alluding to the proposal. to close the Plaza de España and charge tourists a fee to access it.
The PSOE announced that an amendment to the entire local accounts would be presented, but Sanz did not want to wait for the full Budget and has already confirmed that he will extend the current ones.
The extension, as Juan Bueno, the Treasury delegate, explained on Tuesday, puts at risk the investment of around 150 million in the city, which will require budget modifications and, therefore, the support of the rest of the municipal forces.
Among the projects that remain in the air are the works at the Lope de Vega Theater, the restoration and conditioning of the Cernuda House, the increase in the staff of Local Police agents and firefighters or the anti-
graffiti command
.
Seville is not the only relevant municipality of the Andalusian PP that is seeing the approval of its budgets conditioned by Vox's demand to enter the City Council.
Linares (55,729 inhabitants), in Jaén, one of the most important squares for the popular, is also seeing its accounts blocked due to the refusal of the ultra formation to give its support if it is not in exchange for armchairs.
Sources from the regional leadership of the party, who do not hide their discomfort at the blackmail of the extreme right party, recognize that, except for a change of position in the leadership led by Abascal, there is no other alternative other than the extension.