The spokesperson for Adelante Andalucía, José Ignacio García, announced this Sunday the eight people who will head the lists for each province in the general elections on November 29, focusing on real estate speculation. "We are presenting ourselves to the Congress of Deputies so that Andalucía 'is not a backdrop at the service of investment funds and housing speculators,'" García pointed out.
The event was held in a square on Doña María Coronel street in Seville, surrounded by ground floors converted into tourist apartments, a setting chosen to present a project that aims to confront "the Andalucía that we do not want." "We are going to the Congress of Deputies with this clear message: we want an Andalucía for ordinary working people to live in and not an Andalucía that is a backdrop where we, the neighbors, do not fit," he added.
In reference to the environment in which he intervened alongside the provincial candidates, he emphasized that they are going to the polls "to make sure that apartments and tourist flats like these become homes for neighbors again, become commercial premises again, become a city for working people."
Regarding this model, García detailed that it is "precisely the one that turns housing into a market good, into a business and not into a place for people to live" or in which there is "normal commerce." In contrast, he denounced the proliferation of "tourist apartments in the hands of an investment fund that serve to speculate." "That is the model of Andalucía that we do not want," he insisted.
The formation took advantage of the event to present its proposal for a "new, fresh, and cheerful" left against a "backdrop that embodies the Andalucía that the formation rejects." Thus, it has prioritized housing, public transport, the cost of gasoline and the shopping basket, salaries, and work-life balance, which will be the axes of its campaign for the general elections.
"In Adelante Andalucía we are going to talk about real life, about how we Andalusians suffer and not about the nonsense of politicians. And we are going to do all of that with something that has always characterized us and that will be the hallmark of this electoral campaign, we are going to do it with joy," García announced.
The organization claims to be the "only growing political force" and asserts that it is "expanding the space of the left and connecting with young people." In this line, García has defended that "we are the only political force that currently has the capacity to stand up to the PP and Vox. We are doing it in Parliament and we are going to do it in the Congress of Deputies."
Under the slogan of a "fresh left with new faces, ordinary people without a political career, but with a lot of experience in their jobs," Adelante has presented its eight heads of list. "None of those here are professional politicians, they are normal and ordinary Andalusians who live from their work. That is why we have to make the presentation on a Sunday. They come to bring the best that Andalucía has and take it to the Congress of Deputies. The experience of the people who make Andalucía work every day by working, caring, or studying," García has announced.
The candidacy for Jaén is led by Silvia Cano, a nursing assistant linked to care and interested in childhood policies; for Sevilla, Luis de los Santos, a lawyer specializing in criminal law and human rights; for Cádiz, María Sánchez, an engineer in the metal sector and housing activist; and for Almería, Tania Ferre, a temporary teacher of Geography and History and participant in the Marea Verde.
Completing the lists, for Córdoba, Carmen Sánchez, a historian and tour guide with "extensive experience in anti-racist activism"; for Huelva, Carmen Martín, a home care worker and housing activist; for Granada, María Alcantud, a student and social media communicator on political issues, especially feminist; and for Málaga, Ana Jiménez, a Biology teacher in public school, with an environmentalist background and activist in the Marea Verde.
García has emphasized that Adelante is conceived as the party of the working class of Andalucía. "We are not against any normal and ordinary working-class Andalusian. We are against those who sell Andalucía, against those who speculate with housing, against those who always have Andalucía and its ordinary people mistreated," he concluded.
The candidate for Granada, María Alcantud, has opened her speech demanding more youth presence in the Congress of Deputies. "I have lived firsthand what rent increases are, what it is to have to move every year because my landlord wants to raise the price, the privatization of public university, the waiting lists in healthcare that I am still on after years or that they don't want to register me when I start working and for that reason I do not think I will tolerate the opinion of any 60-year-old man with seven properties and zero days contributed outside of politics who comes to tell me that what I live is not true," she said.
"We are the main option to defend youth and I know that both my colleagues and I in particular will defend it tooth and nail starting from November 29 in the Congress of Deputies," she declared.
On the other hand, the head of the list for Málaga, Ana Jiménez, has assured that she has been "a direct witness to how my colleagues have had a lot of difficulties finding housing to be able to work." In her speech, she emphasized the railway situation in Andalusia, stating that "we need to connect capitals. What cannot be is that a person traveling from Seville to Almería takes twice as long as from Seville to Madrid."
"This is going to be a priority for us. Adelante Andalucía is going to ask for and build all this because we really have to make up for what no Andalusian Government has done before. No one has cared to provide infrastructure to Andalusia. And this is not a whim," Jiménez emphasized.
The candidate for Cádiz, María Sánchez, has explained that she is a housing activist because it "hurts me to see how my colleagues at work, every day there are more who have to leave their municipality because even working and having done everything they were supposed to do, they have not been able to afford to live in their neighborhoods, in their cities, with their loved ones, in their environment."
"Housing is a right that must be protected and cannot continue to be a source of income for a few at the expense of the working class," she added, also considering that "no Government has tackled as it should" the "main concern of the Andalusians."
Finally, the head of the list for Seville, Luis de los Santos, has defended that since its formation "we have to provide secure measures that ensure security and reinforce public services." "It hurts me that after eight years and after it was said by the PSOE that the first measure would be to repeal the Gag Law, it has not been done by the Council of Ministers," he indicated.
The lawyer has closed his intervention by advancing his intention to "present an initiative that immediately repeals all gag laws," specifically, "the Citizen Security Law and the laws of the Penal Code that limit the right to information."