Alfonso Callejero reflects on the year remaining before the next municipal elections and the planned inaugurations in this pre-election year.
There's a year to go until the municipal elections. And like a clock ticking on the political cycle, the season of giant scissors, commemorative plaques, and inaugurations with forced smiles begins. Councilors and mayors dust off their ties, rehearse poses for photos, and prepare headlines. The perennial pothole, the project announced for the umpteenth time, the iconic plaza. Everything, suddenly, is urgent.
With elections just 12 months away, everything is moving at a frantic pace. The regional council is accelerating the nursing home project, sensing the election year approaching, dusting off the plan, and announcing it. Then, will it be another four years? We'll see, but in the meantime, everyone will promise us again that they'll build the nursing home in Fraga this year. A promise they won't have to make in Mequinenza, because we can see how their project is progressing, thanks to the tenacity and commitment of the local council, and they are meeting deadlines to have the first public nursing home in our entire region.
As they announced at the end of last year, the parade of politicians will come through the gardens of Casa Dueso, which they will want to inaugurate opportunely, after almost twenty years of neglect and five long legislatures, with so many mayoralties that they promised in vain.
Our phones will be filled with reels of press conferences announcing projects, councilors and mayors cutting ribbons and posing in front of signs while patting people on the back.
It's true that this legislative term has reopened the Cine Florida, a cultural project that had been closed for years, and that construction on the San José de Calasanz school is progressing. But are these achievements enough to define an entire legislative term?
Because the list of pending issues is extensive. The Pont Petit remains in limbo, languishing in the planning stages, desperately needing renovation and a pedestrian walkway to make it accessible. Social housing for young people is just an announcement, while apartments become increasingly inaccessible. The tiles in the Juan Carlos I Gardens continue to wobble, causing scares and falls. The Flavia building is closed, though they can always put up a sign announcing another brilliant idea that will never materialize. And the Old Town continues to languish, faced with the same promises of investment, rehabilitation, and conservation that are recycled and then buried at the bottom of a drawer.
Meanwhile, along the Paseo de la Constitución, people are sleeping on cardboard this week. Workers without a roof over their heads, without decent housing, without a housing solution.
This is a very common pattern: in the rush, they announce whatever fits in a photo. They inaugurate whatever generates a headline. And all of this happens just in time for the election cycle.
And that's where I always think that, as a citizen, the last-minute, contrived political announcement, uploaded to an Instagram story and wrapped in electoral gift paper, cannot erase the memory of these years.
But here's the uncomfortable question: beyond generalizations, should we value equally the politician who has delivered, managed, and strived to carry out his city project, as the one who has lived off promises, empty headlines, and permanent campaigns?
Meanwhile, some of them are wielding their giant scissors to hastily inaugurate projects that have been stalled for years, while we citizens may have to come prepared with a long memory. With a list of broken promises, forgotten pledges, and missed opportunities. Because a town, a region, isn't built with a reel, a plaque, or a ribbon cut at the last minute.
Opinion piece. The opinions expressed in this text are the sole responsibility of its author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of this publication.
