OURENSE, 14 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The family saga that coined ‘Baltarism’ in Ourense bids farewell to the Provincial Council at the hands of Manuel Baltar Blanco, the son of the historic reference to the ‘beret’ José Luis Baltar Pumar, who was succeeded at the helm more than a decade ago of the party in the province, with the opposition of the then Galician leadership of the PP led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and from whom he later ‘inherited’ the institution.
Since his father had an army of loyal mayors and enough power to challenge the deceased Manuel Fraga until this Wednesday in which a Manuel Baltar in his lowest hours has announced that he is resigning from continuing as head of the Provincial Council to facilitate, he assures, that his party can keep it, ‘Baltarianism’ has gone through moments of greater or lesser strength in the 33 years of the leading surname in the Provincial Council.
Always amid accusations of “caciquismo” by his political rivals, one of the hardest moments was precisely that of the succession from father to son in Ourense, against which the Galician leadership led by Feijóo with the current manoeuvre, without success. leader, Alfonso Rueda, as right hand. They promoted an alternative candidate, the then mayor of Verín Juan Manuel Jiménez Morán, but he lost.
Manuel Baltar managed to take the reins of the provincial PP at the beginning of 2010 from his father and two years later, in 2012, he took charge of the Provincial Council. José Luis Baltar gave way 22 years after assuming the presidency and his eldest son has held the baton for another 11. In total, the ‘dynasty’ has managed to accumulate more than three decades with provincial institutional power.
Years later, in 2014 and already retired, Baltar Pumar was sentenced to nine years of disqualification for a crime of continued prevarication, in relation to the 104 contracts he signed for the provincial institution between the months of January and March 2010, without giving publicity. to the squares, according to the sentence.
Graduated in Law, he obtained a position as an official of the Xunta and began his political career as a provincial delegate of the Department of Agriculture. Later, he agreed to an act as an autonomous deputy and in Parliament he became first vice president.
From that position he won the internal battle that first opened the doors of the party for him and in 2012 he ‘inherited’ the Provincial Council. Already as president of the party and of the provincial institution, he managed to reissue the absolute majority in 2015, but lost it in 2019. The ballot was settled with an agreement with Gonzalo Pérez Jácome to give him the Mayor’s Office in exchange for the Provincial Council.
And in the last municipal ones it could not have been either. Although he sought to strengthen himself with signings such as Manuel Cabezas as a candidate for the Ourense mayor’s office, on May 28, he also stayed at the gates of an absolute majority, in the absence of a deputy. Mathematics left a complicated scenario also in the Consistory, whose resolution is still up in the air.
Before, a tough campaign took place in which he was in the media spotlight for various information related to the Provincial Council’s mobile park and other issues, but above all for having been hunted, a few weeks after 28M, on a Sunday at 215 kilometers per hour behind the wheel of a Provincial Council car on the A-52 as it passes through Asturianos (Zamora). The situation led to a trial, which has been postponed.
Given the situation, Baltar’s internal enemies began to appear, more noticeably in recent days, and the regional leadership contributed, according to the sources consulted by Europa Press, to make him see that, as Rueda himself stated this Wednesday – -who did not skimp on photographs with him during the campaign-, the cycles have a beginning and an end.
Manuel Baltar will continue for now at the head of the party in the province and there are voices that place him, in the future, with a position in Europe. But the politician who tilted the succession of Feijóo in the Xunta in favor of Rueda, and who in his day, in the congress in which he defeated Os Peares (through a candidate), urged his daughter Elena not to letting them “cut off” his possibilities, has put an end, with his resignation, to more than three decades of ‘Baltarianism’ in the Provincial Council.