The candidates for mayor of the five political parties that obtained representation in the last municipal elections in 2019 have participated in the electoral debate that Mijas Comunicación organised on the night of Monday 22nd. The space has been divided into seven blocks, five of them thematic and two free interventions, one of them as a presentation and the other as a final closure. 

PP

The debate began with a one-minute intervention by each candidate, who spoke in order, according to their representation in the municipal corporation. This block was opened by the Partido Popular candidate, Ángel Nozal. "We want to bring the good management that Juanma Moreno has implemented in the Regional Government to Mijas, which has turned Andalusia into the third region of Spain in economic order", he pointed out. Among the main objectives of the Popular Party, he remarked, are "to contain taxes, to guarantee the right of urbanisations to be treated equally and to develop effective industrial land". Nozal has placed employment at the heart of his social policies, "making Mijas an attractive town for companies to set up". 

PSOE

The PSOE candidate, Josele González, was the next to intervene. According to the current mayor of Mijas, "in these four years one of my greatest honours is to have been mayor of my town; we have been able to restore the stability, credibility and responsibility in municipal management that this Town Hall needed". In the words of González, "we have solved historical problems and recovered legal certainty to attract private investment, which has placed us in a very advantageous situation in terms of employment and the economy". The PSOE candidate for mayor of Mijas concluded his first speech by recalling that "we have zero debt, we are the fourth city with the lowest unemployment rate in Malaga and the future is promising". 

Cs

The third to speak in this first minute was number 1 for Ciudadanos Mijas, José Carlos Martín, who said "we are very excited to be running with the endorsement of the management we have carried out in the last eight years, where we have been able to transform the municipality by carrying out investments and creating infrastructures that have improved the quality of life of the citizens". Martin gave some examples of management, highlighting the "zero debt, new roads and new parks, the surplus and the 22 million euros that have helped the self-employed and SMEs".  "We have done our homework, we have credibility and we present our candidacy backed by our word", concluded the candidate for Cs.

Vox

The fourth speaker in this first block was Juan Carlos Cuevas, the Vox candidate for mayor of Mijas. Cuevas emphasised that, as a businessman, he has spent "37 years surrounded by foreigners, listening to them" and assured that "Mijas is what it is today thanks to all the foreign residents we have here. You hear their complaints and you become aware of our deficiencies. Being the third largest town in Malaga you notice all the defects, based on the budgets that the Regional Government provides". For Juan Carlos Cuevas, "we must continue to improve many basic aspects that still need to be attended to". 

Con Andalucía

Favio Galán, candidate for Con Andalucía-Unidas Con Mijas, took advantage of this first minute of the presentation to point out that "we are in favour of all the candidates running in the elections being present in the next debate". Galán presented his party as "a coalition of progressive left-wing forces where we have left aside the bipartite system to make a common project that aims to return the Town Hall to its people to meet the demands and claims that we have been compiling throughout this campaign".

Thematic blocks

Following this minute of presentation, the five thematic blocks in which the debate was structured were: economy and finance, employment, social policies, infrastructures and major projects. In each of these blocks, the candidates made two speeches lasting two minutes each, in an order previously established by drawing lots, in which they described the key lines of their programmes. 

Conclusions 

To conclude, in the seventh and last block, the five candidates launched a message to the citizens in which they encouraged them to exercise their right to vote next Sunday 28th. "We at Con Andalucía are the useful vote for Mijas to have a progressive government that returns the rights to the people by applying social justice", concluded the candidate for Con Andalucía-Unidas Con Mijas. 

For his part, in his last speech, the Vox candidate emphasised the importance of security and recalled the lack of provision of personnel, in his opinion, in this area. We have to provide security for tourism, we have to look after it, let's open our eyes, let's start to do things for the urbanisations as well, or if not we will lose that industry", stated Cuevas.

As for the Ciudadanos candidate, José Carlos Martín recalled that "we present an alternative to the bipartite system that seeks to be useful to citizens and put them at the centre of our policies". Martín highlighted his commitment, if he becomes mayor, "to establish universal aid of 250 euros against price rises for residents registered in Mijas, along with a series of measures in the areas of housing, family, youth and security that would not be possible if we had not been managing public money seriously and rigorously for eight years". "We are necessary, we are decisive and our management makes the difference", said Martín. 

Josele González, PSOE candidate for mayor of Mijas, stressed that "this coming Sunday 28th there are ten political parties running in the elections and only three have experience in government". González asked the residents "to trust in experience and capacity; above all, I would like to borrow the vote of the voters of the Partido Popular who do not trust the PP in Mijas and the useful vote of those who are to the left of the PSOE and do not know how to decide between four political groups that are fighting on the same political stage and probably none of them will end up having municipal representation". The socialist candidate ended his speech by pointing out "we need that broad majority to continue transforming our municipality, so that Mijas continues to move forward".

The PP candidate, Ángel Nozal, was in charge of closing the electoral debate, and he recalled some of the measures in his programme regarding the regularisation of industrial estates, equality among all the population centres and the promotion of the Mijas business park. "Because the best policy that exists is the social policy, the one that provides employment. "We will be working as we know how to, the Partido Popular is a party of success, a party of achievements, and there are the examples of Fuengirola, Estepona and Malaga", said Nozal, concluding by saying that "the people know that we know how to do it well and they will trust us, because we will do it well as we did during the time we were governing this municipality".

The election debate was broadcast live on the night of Monday 22nd; you can watch it in replay in the ‘TV a la Carta’ section of our website, Facebook and YouTube. In addition, our newspaper 'Mijas Semanal' (Mijas Weekly) will offer a summary of the highlights of the debate on Friday 26th.

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