Confirmed candidates and unknowns to resolve seven months before the municipal elections

ManacorVirgilio Moreno has been the latest municipal candidate confirmed in Mallorca, after having been chosen last week by unanimity by the socialist group of Inca to head the list for the 2027 municipal elections. Moreno has been the mayor of Inca since June 2015, nearly eleven and a half years ago. He was a candidate for the PSIB-PSOE in 2015, 2019, and 2023, and by heading the list for 2027, it will be the fourth time he has run.

Seven months before the municipal elections, the revelation of candidates for the main municipalities of the Balearic Islands is a slow trickle. And at the other extreme of the long career of the socialist mayor of Inca is the MÉS-Esquerra candidate in Manacor, Ferran Montero, recently proclaimed mayor of the capital of the Llevant, following the resignation of Oliver to dedicate himself to the electoral race for the Council of Mallorca. The candidate, who has been a delegate for Culture and Education during this term, at 31 years old now represents renewal after three consecutive elections in which the MÉS-Esquerra list has been the most voted.

It is not clear how the national early elections will affect political announcements at the municipal level, as the law sets the formal presentation of candidacies within 20 days after the call. Taking into account that the legislation establishes that they must be officially called 55 days in advance and that the scheduled date is May 23, 2027, the legal deadline for submitting candidacies would be from April 14 to 19. In the case of the socialist party, the general elections have forced a halt to the primary process that was planned for this month of October in municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants, those that remain pending after having announced the candidacies for the supra-insular, insular institutions, and municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants. This would include Manacor, Llucmajor, and Alcúdia –with the exception of Inca, which already has a candidate. The PSIB-PSOE anticipates that after the November 29 elections "Ferraz will send a new calendar," which is why it is not yet known if all these processes will have been unblocked before the end of the year. Regarding the smaller municipalities, the proclamation of candidacies would likely be delayed until the end of February, party sources explain.

Beyond the state dynamic, the preparation of the municipal candidacies had already begun many months before. The first candidate for the main municipalities of the Balearic Islands to be made public was David Pujol, from MÉS per Mallorca, who will make his debut as head of the list in the city. On June 2nd, he was proclaimed to lead the 2027 candidacy in Palma.

In July, other names were announced for different municipalities, such as Montero's; that of the current mayor of Palma, Jaime Martínez, who is repeating for the PP, and Àgueda Reynés for the PP in Maó. The woman from Maó currently holds the position of delegate of the IBAVI in Menorca and is not a councilor, but it will be the fourth time she heads the populars' list in the capital of Menorca. She achieved the mayorship in 2011 and 2015, but in 2019 the left-wing parties recovered it. In 2023 she did not run, but the results of Mateu Aínsa, who sent the conservatives back to the opposition, have made her return to municipal politics to try to reconquer Maó.

Also in July, the PSIB-PSOE closed the primaries in Palma and Calvià, with Iago Negueruela and the current delegate of the Government of the Balearic Islands, Alfonso Rodríguez, as candidates. While Negueruela will make his debut in municipal politics after his time in the Government and the Parliament of the Balearic Islands, Rodríguez's will be the fifth candidacy for the PSIB-PSOE for the mayorship of Calvià: 2011, 2015, 2019, 2023 and 2027. He was mayor for two consecutive terms, from 2015 to 2023, and this Tuesday he announced that he is resigning from the position of government delegate to focus on the electoral contest for the mayorship.

One of the latest announcements has been that of the PP of Llucmajor, which will present Mateu Palmer as a candidate for the mayorship. Palmer, an architect by profession, was not on the 2023 lists and does not hold any municipal office. This will be his first prominent public role in local politics. The PP has opted in this case for a new profile to replace the current mayoress of Llucmajor, Xisca Lascolas, who after a term marked by various controversies such as the Son Perot chicken mega-farm, the expansion of the Son Noguera industrial estate, and waste collection, has decided to close a 16-year stage dedicated to municipal politics. She has presided over the municipal corporation since 2023.

The PP of Manacor has also bet on a person outside the realm of municipal politics to head the candidacy of one of the few municipalities that have been a bastion of the left during this term. Football coach Jaume Mut was proposed by the local board of the Popular Party last August and publicly presented at the beginning of September. Mut will replace Maria Antònia Sansó at the head of the conservatives, after she led the candidacy for mayor of Manacor in the last two elections. Although in 2023 she managed to increase from four to six councilors, her position at the head of the opposition has been questioned internally and in 2027 she will not repeat as a candidate.

Not everything is about revelation proposals, and there are also those who climb positions on the lists until they reach number one. This is the case of the young lawyer Miquel Ferrer Mulet, who at 28 years old has been named head of the list for the PP in Inca. In 2023 he went as number three and in the next elections he has the challenge of disputing one of the most solid strongholds of the socialists in Mallorca, facing the seniority of Virgilio Moreno. Who has not yet announced the candidate for Inca is MÉS, which is still pending the party's permanent committee and the assembly, although everything points to Alice Weber repeating.

In Marratxí and Llucmajor, MÉS also still has to ratify the candidacies in the assembly. In Marratxí, for the moment there is only one aspirant, Aina Amengual; while in Llucmajor the voting assembly is scheduled for November 14 and Oriol Gómez is also the only candidate, according to party sources. In Pollença, the PSIB has not yet announced if the mayor, Martí, will opt for re-election: if he decides to, he would be a candidate directly, as happened with Virgilio Moreno in Inca.

In Calvià, everything indicates that the PP candidate will be the current mayor and president of the local board, Juan Antonio Amengual, who was a candidate for mayor for the first time in 2023. As for MÉS, in Calvià they will go in a coalition within Esquerra per Calvià with Decide Calvià, Esquerra Unida and Sumar, with Isabel Manresa, from Decide Calvià, at the head.

In Menorca, the PSOE has ratified Héctor Pons in Maó and Llorenç Ferrer in Ciutadella, while Eduardo Robsy has been announced as the head of the list in Alaior. The PP has designated Juana Mari Pons to repeat in Ciutadella. The municipal Menorquinist candidacies of MÉS per Menorca are still pending. Regarding Ibiza, the PP has yet to make public who will head the list, while the PSIB has already announced the candidacy of Elena López Bonet.

Vox has not yet designated its candidates for the municipal elections in May, and in Menorca, it has announced that it will present lists in Maó and Ciutadella. Coalició per Mallorca is also preparing to enter the fray, having begun to organize itself in various municipalities. All this, without taking into account the exclusively municipal candidacies, such as the case of Embat de Manacor, a formation that wants to dispute the left-wing vote from MÉS-Esquerra in the capital of the Llevant and that, despite having announced that it will run in the elections, has not yet said who will be at its head.