An extraordinary council meeting in Pollensa on Monday was dominated by one motion. Opposition parties had presented a motion of "reprobation" against the mayor, Tomeu Cifre, and the councillor for social welfare, Francisca Cerdà. The wording of the motion contained "abuse of power". Behind this were three aspects: the councillor had been vaccinated and had allegedly "jumped the queue"; she had then lied to local media when asked about this vaccination; she and the mayor had been given regular PCR tests over a several-month period, tests paid for with public money.
The motion failed because the four parties which are in power at Pollensa town hall did not support it. However, three of them - El Pi, the Partido Popular and the UMP Unió Mollera Pollencina - all registered their disapproval of what had happened and of a lack of transparency. They had only learned about the councillor's vaccination, "once it had already become a problem". This was something that "must not be repeated". These three parties otherwise accepted that the vaccination and the PCR tests had complied with protocols and were authorised by the health service.
The mayor repeatedly apologised for mistakes that had been made. Cerdà, who is a member of the mayor's Tots per Pollença party, remained silent for almost two hours before finally having her say. "If I could go back three months in time with the same information I had then, I would still have been vaccinated." She had been vaccinated in order to protect residents at the Sant Domingo care home. "If I had entered the residence, was asymptomatic with Covid and then infected someone, they would have called for me to be shot."
The opposition parties, who have asked the anti-corruption office to investigate the affair, believed that tasks which Cerdà was apparently performing at the care home were unnecessary. The former mayor, Miquel Àngel March of Junts Avançam, noted that El Pi, the PP and the UMP had all expressed their disapproval but had lacked the courage to support the motion.
* Reprobation is a procedure used in Spain by bodies such as Congress and town halls to express disapproval. It doesn't have legal consequences in that a vote in favour does not oblige an official to resign. A decision to resign or not would be one for the official to make.
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The expression 'turkey's don't vote for Christmas springs to mind'....so why are we not surprised that ultimately the political representatives chose not to hang one of their own....we can all guess why but it serves us no great purpose.