Juan Galindo changed his life, or channeled it, Aurelio Fernández García (Lucena, 1975). The mayor of the prosperous town of Subbética, the second most populous after the provincial capital, was good at mathematics and after completing his secondary studies, he suggested to his mother that they study them at the University of Seville: the wife, who had been widowed prematurely a few years before, he objected and went to talk to Galindo, the teacher of the youngest of his three children, with the intention of getting this idea out of the boy’s head. The answer was not what he expected, but quite the opposite: “Aurelio is good at mathematics,” he told him. So there was nothing to do and the kid ended up getting his degree in the discipline that fascinated him.
Politics came later: after more than two decades dedicated to teaching, always in the public institutes of Lucena, the PP He noticed him, a man still young, very integrated into his village and who was in all the circles of brotherhood and popular traditions. The first call, in 2018, came from Salvador Fuentesand Aurelio rejected the proposal. Soon, José Antonio Nieto and Adolfo Molina insisted on him, and he no longer resisted: opposition advisor during the mandate started in 2019, the party placed him seventh in the candidacy for the 2022 regional elections and he was elected in the midst of a rising wave of Juanma Moreno and his absolute majority. In the 2023 municipal elections, he was head of the list in Lucena: since then, he has been mayor of the town where he was born, where he lives with his wife and two children and with which he admits to being in love. “The PSOE was in power here since the last century,” jokes Fernández.
-I have to ask you about the discredit of politics after what happened in Valencia. Are you aware of this?
-Yes, totally. These images of people affected by floods and with a violent attitude towards the authorities, towards the Kings, should make us think. We can’t play politics on everything. The crisis we have experienced is so serious that no politician has a magic wand to solve it immediately, and what citizens do not want is more political wars or us blaming each other. others. We are here to solve problems, not create them. I asked the spokespersons of this municipal council to come together to help these people who suffered from the floods, not to register so many people.
-Yesterday [por el lunes, pues la entrevista se realizó el martes] Arturo Pérez-Reverte said on television that there is no solution to this problem, because a politician will always prioritize the dictates of his party over the needs of citizens. You who arrived in politics with a profession already earned, how do you fit into the orientations or hierarchy of your training?
– Coming into politics with a profession that you can return to gives you a freedom that others may not have, and it is important that politicians do not depend on that, on politics. In this government team, most of us are in this situation. What is important is to leave the office to discover the reality, which is not here, but in the street, in a square, during a meeting with friends. And you have to listen, especially to those who tell you what you’re not doing well.
The councilor, in front of an image of the Virgin of Araceli at the Town Hall
-Juan Cano, the founder of Eurosemillas, reflected between the lines last Sunday in these pages on the precipitous fall of the industrial fabric of the province in the seventies and eighties of the last century and he came to say that there was little more than Lucena. What does this city have? You have to know it.
-I get asked this question a lot, and the answer is that Lucena has the Lucentinos, who are entrepreneurs by nature. The other day, during a conference, someone recalled that Lucena had been the city of three cultures, Christian, Jewish and Muslim, and added that it had one more, that of entrepreneurship. And I totally agree with it, because you see things here… With the crisis that occurred in the furniture sector, there are very powerful companies that have been able to reconvert and continue to generate many jobs. What is perhaps the most popular today is refrigeration, which is an emerging, consolidated and traditionally recognized sector: I have even taken advisors to visit companies in the refrigeration sector and they leave surprised by what is happening here. There are people who say that the Jewish past has a lot to do with the entrepreneurial character, with this Lucentino gene, and it is possible. What is clear is that Lucena is a reference at the commercial and industrial level, not only in Córdoba but throughout Andalusia. I remember that the Minister of Industry, Jorge Paradela, said during a visit to present a plan for the refrigeration sector that I would like there to be a lot of Lucenas in Andalusia. What corresponds to administrations is to be alongside businesses, not to hinder them. I think we are on the right track.
“There are people who say that our Jewish background is linked to our entrepreneurial character”
-Has the Andalusian Government put you in a bind by canceling the High Resolution Hospital project?
– We don’t have anything closed here. I am an optimistic person by nature and I hope this works. What we need is for us to have concrete things now. We cannot continue to drag our feet and throw the ball, because we have spent more than twenty years in our city mortgaging the health improvements of this future center: practically nothing has been done here in the belief that it will come, that it will come. We have an emergency room in a place that is not the best, there are problems in health centers. I have not yet seen any change of heart on the part of the Board of Directors: until I see what they are going to do, I cannot say. The Council said a lot of things but didn’t specify anything: I’m waiting for a meeting with the Minister of Health to see what they have planned. What we can’t do is continue without having anything because we don’t have everything. I will claim what we have been waiting for for so many years. I will continue to fight.
-Even if the fight is against his own people.
-Obviously. I think it’s better to knock on the door of an administration that runs your party, because there is greater harmony.
-And what are you doing as a government team regarding this matter?
-I could have delayed. But we didn’t come here to do that, we came here to do things. I am convinced that if the burying of the high voltage line had been done two years ago, when it should have been done, the situation would have been different. What have we done? Take this project out of the drawer. When we work with Endesa, we know all the problems that exist, but that doesn’t mean that things don’t get done. We have tendered and awarded this work and are waiting for it to be completed, which should only be a matter of months.
-Citizen security. Is it more or less?
– There are specific problems, of course, but the feeling of citizens is that they live in a safe place. There is one leisure area where there have been some problems and we are not looking away: we have gone so far as to close establishments. We are intensifying surveillance in this area and there is direct contact with neighbors and the National Police. We also plan to install cameras in different areas of the city.
-And when will they be installed?
-We would have liked them to be installed earlier, but one of the problems of administrations is bureaucracy, procedures, and I hope that in the coming months this will be a reality. This is a priority for us, as it will provide a greater sense of security.
Carmen Parking
-Where is the Huerta del Carmen parking project?
-All administrative procedures are following the path they should follow, and we hope that the tender and subsequent execution works will begin soon. We have been talking about this parking lot for over twenty years. The one in Plaza Nueva works, it works well, but it is not enough, because there is a lot of activity here. We need more places. We believe in public-private collaboration for the project to which you refer, which is also located in the area of the Palais de Justice, to which we do not give the importance it has because we have also been talking about it since longer. for over twenty years, and we already have it there.
-Do you have the three million euros that you need to spend on the construction of the new electrical substation?
-It is something that is not closed. We talked about estimates. What is clear is that we will do what is necessary, because we cannot mortgage the future of our city, in terms of housing and industrial growth. It’s not just the Town Hall: there are also partial projects, businessmen who must contribute. If we have to remove the car, we will. We expect to have a meeting in the coming days with the Council, AVRA, Cabra Town Hall and partial plans. An estimate of the necessary powers has already been made. We are in the pre-tender phase.
-How will the procedures take place to build a hotel in two historic buildings belonging to the Town Hall?
-This is one of the options we are considering. We have several municipal buildings, like the Tercia or the Golem, opposite the Conservatory, or the Víbora Winery, which need to be enhanced, but this requires a lot of money, and we are going to include some of them in the next European Fund. We want to do something in the Víbora winery, which is being demolished, and we want it to be of a social nature. And yes, there is a shortage of hotel rooms, we are aware of that. The hotel project in municipal buildings is in its infancy. In truth, it’s something that has been talked about and there have been conversations with a group of investors who were interested, but we have to finish the development of the project, and at the moment, the question is not very advanced.
