The Official College of Architects of Madrid (COAM) has lived on Tuesday the most unusual elections in its history. The Dean Sigfrido Herráez, winner for the third time and with 54 % of the votes, will remain in office. The Electoral Table of the Corporation excluded its candidacy for exceeding the maximum of two mandates, a resolution appealed by it, which on May 17 forced to admit its list provisionally. If the final sentence invalidates the process in the coming months, it will leave the institution to the edge of the disgust.
“I stay with the good that we will produce when giving continuity to our work,” says the winner of the contest. The school is governed by a limitation of two mandates, that is, six years. Herráez defends that his first period at the head of the corporation cannot compute as a complete one because only half lasted, however, the statutes contemplate this possibility only if 12 months or less have elapsed since the inauguration. Housing Councilor of the PP between 1991 and 2005, the designer took the deanery in November 2020 after triumphing one for his shy response to Rocío Monasterio intrusion, then Vox spokesman in the Madrid Assembly. Herráez managed to unite a fractured school for the first reprobation in 100 years of history and, in June 2022, revalidated his mandate.
The elected dean denounces that the president of the Electoral Table, Luis de la Rica, is a political uncle of the woman of his rival, Jesús San Vicente, head of the only list initially admitted by the regulatory body of the vote at school. “I feel joy for the defense we have made of internal democracy, which in the end has imposed,” Herráez says. No one is clear about the next steps to take if the judge came to invalidate the elections with their final resolution. As happened after the resignation in Block of Hermida and his team, an age board could take care of the school until the call for new elections. It is an organ composed of the four most old members who have full government powers. That the electoral table automatically declares San Vicente seems more unlikely.
The group of this project professor at the Higher School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM) – which also directs a postgraduate degree and exercises as an expert in ephemeral architecture – has managed to overcome that of Herráez at the Board of Representatives, a kind of high house in which the competences of all the colleges are delegated. It will have 23 of the 73 seats compared to 21 related to the dean. “It is very difficult to fight the machinery of an established power. I am happy for this result obtained only with our ideas and our media. The program we defend has aroused interest,” slides the candidate, who reaffirms in the idea that “this third legislature of Herráez threatens the statutes.”
The electoral tables have remained open between 10.00 and 20.00 at the headquarters of Hortaleza Street, although an overwhelming majority of the associates has exercised the vote telematicly through the website. In total, 2,299 Madrid architects of the 10,871 members have mobilized in these elections, which represents an increase in the participation of almost four points compared to three years ago. The Coam will announce in the next few days a date for the inauguration of Herráez and the Board of Representatives, the start of a mandate that promises to be turbulent.
The situation of the architects is now as uncertain as that of the Illustrious College of Physicians of Madrid (ICOMEM), whose president -elect since December, Tomás Merina, has not yet been able to take office. The Institution’s Resources Commission invalidated its candidacy for breach of requirements after the elections were held. The Icomem then entered. The verdict could take up to a year and a half to arrive, as announced by the legal advisors of Merina. There is a paradox that its predecessor, Manuel Martínez Selles, severely punished at the polls, will govern until then the corporation.
