“From this moment, Seville begins to work with an expanded budget.” This is how the mayor of Seville, the popular José Luis Sanz, concluded this Tuesday the more than three months of negotiations to move forward with the municipal bill. Finally, the city council confirmed the fragility of its minority situation in the Seville City Council, since it was not possible to obtain enough votes for approval. The closure of Vox, which demanded entry into local government and opposition from PSOE and Podemos-IU in return for its support, will force the PP to manage the budgets approved in 2023 by the previous mayor, the socialist Antonio Muñoz .
In mid-November last year, Sanz presented budget plans amounting to 1,031 million euros – not including the items for municipal companies – which he described as “lacking ideology” or “red lines” in order to achieve at least the abstention of some parties. in opposition. There were no unacceptable problems from the start, but Vox made it a condition for entering the city government from the beginning of the negotiations, following the example of Valencia, where the PP finally agreed to allow the far-right party to toll the municipal bills. Sources close to the mayor warned at the time that he was not at all in favor of this situation being repeated in Seville, but they recognized that it was a decision that would be made within 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 has already been using for two years in Madrid to overcome the blockade imposed by Santiago Abascal's party in the Spanish capital and will become his projects have to carry out budget changes until the end.
The Seville City Council has attributed this situation not only to Vox's conditions for entering the city's government, but also to the refusal of the rest of the opposition parties to come up with “ideas” to solve the city's problems. However, it was the PSOE that in recent months has supported the mayor's community team in carrying out the tax regulations and budget changes necessary to approve the increase in the price of water and the maintenance of parks and traffic lights (thanks for the abstention). the socialist community group).
However, the PSOE has already warned that this support – which also allowed Sanz not to rely on Vox – would not be transferred to households. From the first moment they rejected the allocations to deal with the debt – because they were unrealistic -, its reduction in issues of women's policy and the cancellation of the allocations for Democratic Memory. Muñoz's party sent the PP a document with proposals in January, to which it received no response. “The responsibility for the absence of a budget lies with the local government,” warned the former Socialist city councilor on Tuesday, recalling that he also always managed to agree on the bills than his party in the last two Electoral periods as a minority governed with Ciudadanos – like the one in 2023 –, well with Podemos (except those in 2015, which were also extended).
“Budgets are not just numbers, but they hide the city model,” Muñoz also noted, making it clear that his formation would not give the mayor a “blank check for crazy ideas,” alluding to the proposal to close the Plaza de España and charge tourists a fee for access. The PSOE announced that an amendment to the total 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 accounts.
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The extension, as Juan Bueno, the delegate of the Ministry of Finance, explained on Tuesday, jeopardizes the investment of around 150 million in the city, which will require budgetary changes and therefore the support of the rest of the municipal forces. Among the projects still in the air are the work on the Lope de Vega Theater, the restoration and modernization of the Cernuda House, the increase in the number of local police officers and firefighters or the anti-graffiti squad.
Seville is not the only relevant municipality of the Andalusian PP whose budgets are conditioned by Vox's demand to enter the city council. The accounts of Linares (pop. 55,729) in Jaén, one of the most important places for the population, will also be blocked because the Ultra formation refuses to give its support unless it exchanges it for armchairs. Sources from the party's regional leadership, who do not hide their discomfort with the blackmail by the far-right party, recognize that other than a change of position in the leadership led by Abascal, there is no other alternative than extension.