“I recorded the rally that Pedro held at the Lake of Life in 2017, but literally, none of it in my head, I recorded it on my phone.” Enrique Valle, an employee at the Dos Hermanas municipal warehouse , makes the pretense of reaching into his pocket to pull out his phone. He is 60 years old and is waiting at the PSOE stand at the fair in this Sevillian city of 137,561 inhabitants, including himself, for the kick-off event of Pedro Sánchez’s pre-campaign. Valle alludes to the meeting of the current prime minister in January of the same year, where he announced that he would start the primary race for his party’s general secretariat after his sudden departure in 2016. “They all come here because Dos Hermanas is a socialist. I was very young, but I remember Felipe’s performances in the velodrome and I also came with Zapatero,” adds his party and work colleague Antonio Molina, 68.
Molina alludes to the almost totemic character that Dos Hermanas has in socialist imagination. In a municipality like the Andalusian Commune, where the once-hegemonic PSOE lost its strength in the ballot box with every election, the city continued to gain votes until it won its eleventh victory with an absolute majority on May 28th, a municipal way, initiated in 1983 by historic socialist leader Francisco Toscano and continued this time by his successor Francisco Rodríguez. The city is the most important that the PSOE rules in Andalusia after the loss of Seville, a milestone that only reinforces its importance as a talisman for socialist leaders.
The images of his velodrome linger in the retina overflowing in the performances of Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra, which opposition leaders of the time could only gaze upon with envy and the bitter conviction that they would never reach those record attendance numbers (there) has room for more than 100,000 people). José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero also held large rallies there and now Sánchez – who also launched his campaign for the April 2019 parliamentary elections here – has returned to rekindle the spirit of the comeback of 2017, where he, as he did this Sunday in his Rede himself said: “It began this wonderful adventure that led us to change Spain for the better and I’m not ready for this journey to end on July 23rd.”
“It does you a lot of good to come here,” says Toscano, mayor from 1983 until his retirement in 2022 and one of Sánchez’s main supporters in the party. “The idea is that militancy mobilizes and that’s why he was interested in being here for this emotional part of the vote,” he adds. “The election of Dos Hermanas is a way of appealing to the PSOE’s grassroots and recalling this link with the party’s history and triumphant past, particularly in Andalusia,” says Ángel Cazorla, professor at the Institute of Political Science and the Administration of the University of Granada.
The emotional factor that radiates from this Sevillian city is also highlighted by Antonio Hernández-Rodicio, Head of Strategic Communications and Policy Advice at Thinking Heads. “Dos Hermanas is a symbol with the ability to unite people, it is a historic small homeland where Andalusian power was won and remains,” he points out. And it is that the city not only confirmed the absolute majority of 2019, but also did so with more votes, thereby driving away the ghosts of last year’s regional elections, in which the PSOE for the first time since the PCE won won the local elections in 1979 it was defeated by the PP, which was 13 points higher.
Current Mayor Francisco Rodríguez has a different explanation. “Here, the PSOE is the party that most resembles the people of our city, which is why we, with the three district presidents, have always been a source of inspiration and a reference,” he emphasizes.
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If, as Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba said, “politics is a state of mind,” it is difficult to see a dejected activist or citizen in Dos Hermanas. “I’m from the right, but I’ve always voted socialist in my town because things have been done very well,” admits a neighbor who prefers not to be named. Manuel Pérez, a Nazarene teacher and educator and head of the Ideas Foundation, who has been campaigning for social integration and support against school failure in this city for two decades, is also clear: “What is happening here is no coincidence.” The political vision of Toscano convinced everyone with a good team, honesty and closeness. That would explain why the wave of PP hasn’t penetrated here, because what prevails is the management,” he explains.
“Originally in Dos Hermanas there was a significant working population and left civic power may be the root, but the main reason is that Dos Hermanas has become a reference city and that is why the PSOE is elected very much, not because he is a socialist, but because his neighbors appreciate the leadership of his former mayor and hope that the current one will continue.” The person speaking in this way is Pedro Sánchez – different from the governor – who, as a high-ranking official, always stands in the shadows during his almost 40 years as mayor of Nazareno was one of the main supporters of Toscano and now acts as official chronicler of the place.
A city that never stops growing
The Entrenúcleos neighborhood in Dos Hermanas (Seville), where 6,000 new houses are to be built. Alejandro Ruesga
As an example, Sánchez cites the exponential growth of the city, which in these four decades has become the second largest in Seville and the sixth largest in Andalusia, ahead of Cádiz and Jaén, with 140,000 inhabitants according to the census. It is the only Andalusian municipality that has not stopped increasing its population since 1996, thanks, according to the chronicler, to “a harmonious and targeted urban growth”. In addition to affordable living space that attracts young families, plots were also offered for the Universities of Pablo de Olavide and Loyola, the sports city of Betis and the Amazonas logistics center, which Dos Hermanas chose because of its good connections. “There are sports, cultural and leisure infrastructures here…” he emphasizes.
“Dos Hermanas may not be pretty, but it responded to the needs of the citizens and in the communities the administration is appreciated and here it was impeccable,” says Sánchez and Pérez adds: “I don’t know if it will be like that .” It is a talisman, but it is a source of inspiration that marks a concrete and real path that another way of doing politics is possible.”