Vara links the electoral results in Andalusia with the rise in prices

“Waves are fine, but for fashions.” With that phrase, the president of Extremadura, Guillermo Fernández Vara, replies to the still number one popular figure in the region, José Antonio Monago. The latter, triumphant after the success of the Andalusian PP in winning its first absolute majority on Sunday, said on Monday: “The wave is coming from the south and in the south we are also in Extremadura, I have no doubt that this wave will permeate Extremadura in the next regional and municipal elections.

For the socialist Vara, on the other hand, the issue is not going smoothly. “Politics is the life of the people,” he said this Tuesday, pulling one of his slogans. “What makes you win or lose is that (citizens) know that you work hard for things to improve and that they trust you.”

In the event that the Andalusian elections may have a national reading, Vara attributes the loss of support to the PSOE to the consequences of the war in Ukraine. «There is a reality as a result of the war in Ukraine: everything that has to do with prices distorts the vision that citizens have of politics. A lot of good has been done: pensions have been raised, the minimum wage… Sometimes these advances end up overshadowed by the rise in prices».

In addition, he recalls that the last three regional elections (Madrid, Castilla and Andalusia) have resulted in the continuity of the governments and he believes that it has to do with the management of the pandemic.

He does not go into assessing whether the disagreements with Podemos in the national coalition government have been able to take their toll on the Andalusian socialists, although he acknowledges that “I have already said that I would like things to be different.”

Vara congratulates Juanma Moreno and shows clear support for his Andalusian counterpart so that he “leads the renewal project of the Andalusian PSOE.” Same, she says, as he did when he lost to Monago. «On Sunday there were elections in which one won and others lost, as happens in life itself. I have lived it and I know how fleeting success is and how fleeting defeat is, and how important work is.

That is why he hopes to win again in a year. “With the PP there were 150,000 unemployed and here now there are 80,000.” Vara is sure that Extremadurans will value the new projects at the polls. «When in a couple of months one of the great European slaughterhouses is inaugurated, there will be 150 families who will see their expectations and hopes fulfilled, with the Amaron logistics center there will be another 1,000 families, the gigafactory, the Trujillo factory, the Cáceres factories and the projects of the former spaces of Mérida and Navalmoral. Next year Extremadura will be different.