It is the first time that Aragon. Such was the uncertainty regarding this milestone that, last December, the Aragonese Government sent observers to Extremadura so that they would not miss any details of the operation of their elections. Later, at the beginning of the campaign, the Executive of the popular Jorge Azcón organized a simulation to rehearse the election day of this February 8. The date has arrived and so far there is hardly any surprise on a day in which 991,893 residents are summoned to the polls. The other doubt, that of participation, for now aims to resist similar data to those of 2023, although there is only one envelope at stake this Sunday: that of the Presidency of the community. He had already exercised the right to active suffrage.
Hours earlier, at 9:00, the polling stations opened without incident. In the city of Zaragoza, where more than half of the population of Aragon is concentrated, the sun was rising and the temperatures around 10 degrees Celsius invited people to go and vote early in the morning. Among the earliest risers was Noé Fau, 28, who has traveled from Madrid – where he works as a lawyer – to exercise the right to vote with his parents. Its voting center is the Virgen del Pilar Secondary School, in the upper-middle class neighborhood of Casablanca. And only three tables. All the members and titular presidents went to their positions. Also the substitutes.
“People want to vote,” says Fau. “There is an electoral atmosphere,” points out his mother next to the ballot table, with 14 piles for each party that is presented. The three family members maintain that the fact that “much more importance” is placed on a community that “seems not to exist.” With those words, the three coin the epic motto of Teruel exists.
That idea will be repeated by many of the voters consulted throughout the day. They will also affirm that they have perceived a lot of electoral atmosphere in recent weeks, although the electoral campaign has not influenced them too much when choosing the ballot. “Everyone is talking about the elections. There has been more commotion than other times,” says Cristina Calvo, a 39-year-old pharmacist, dressed in sports clothing who goes to play sports after inserting her envelope. Pedro Arellano, a 49-year-old businessman, goes with his two young children to vote. “The street is crowded, there is going to be more voting at the national level,” he considers. Three constituencies distribute the 67 seats of Aragon: Zaragoza, Huesca and Teruel, which bring together 731 municipalities.
Already in the center of the capital, voters mix with tourists who enter and leave the Basilica del Pilar incessantly. It is noon and the movement is also repeated in the Business Faculty, a few meters from the ecclesiastical complex, converted into a voting center. With twenty tables, it is one of the largest in Zaragoza. “My friends and I have debated a lot these days about the elections and they are going to come to vote too,” says Marta Estava, 24 years old and a law student, next to a huge line of people waiting for their turn at the ballot box.
Outside, the electoral posters flutter in the intense wind, although with a “very good” day and the influx moves to the bars on the mythical Tubo Street. “There are many lines now at City Hall!” is heard at the bar of one of the establishments. The City Council also serves as an electoral college this Sunday. Representatives of all the parties mix there, including Se Acabó la Fiesta, of the agitator Alvise Pérez—who is running in regional elections for the first time. The accent of some of its representatives is not Aragonese, but Canarian.
“They are always arguing”
In Teruel, about fifteen people took a photo at two in the afternoon this Sunday in the Plaza del Torico, in the heart of the town. They all had one thing in common: the green Vox proxy card hanging around their necks. campaigning in Aragon for the last two weeks, the far-right party has also deployed its people this Sunday around the capital of Teruel and its voting centers, coming mainly from Castellón and Valencia.
The large presence has become a topic of conversation among all the representatives, more or less upset with the presence of party representatives from other areas of Spain, something they had never seen before, at least with the volumes of this electoral campaign. “Well, are you going to have to deal with them?” a PSOE representative said to a PP representative, who responded: “Well, we’ll see.”
At the Grupo Escolar headquarters, one of the most central polling stations in Teruel, Sergio Vázquez waits outside after having inserted his ballot into the ballot box with hope. “I hope for a change in policy, a more correct, less corrupt policy, and that they put Teruel on the map,” says Vázquez, 32, in a clear allusion to the problem of depopulation and the problems derived from public services that this area of emptied Spain suffers.
In another of the voting centers, the Ensanche School in Teruel, Miguel Ángel, 57, comes out with a loaf of bread under his arm and all the voting ballots in his hand. He explains that he will not save them, but that he likes to later look at who is who on each of the lists. He does not believe that these elections are going to modify the current Aragonese political map much and he wants whoever wins to do so by an absolute majority, so that he can carry out his electoral program without ties. In fact, he defends the application of double-round elections in Spain because he considers that it would be a way to end the “blockade” that, for example, led the PP to call elections after failing to secure a majority to approve the regional budgets.
“Let the parties that have to unite unite and let us know with what program we are going to govern,” cries the man accompanied by his 18-year-old son Javier, who this Sunday is one of the 32,891 who will debut at the regional polls. “I have informed myself a little,” he explains, basically watching the debate of the eight candidates that Spanish Television broadcast. Physiotherapy student in Valencia, regrets the politics that can be seen today. “They are always arguing.”
