Torrevieja’s coalition council seems unlikely to get a budget passed for 2017, after the two Ciudadanos councillors, Pilar Gómez Magán and Paqui Parra, said they would not vote for it. Their votes combined with the main opposition Partido Popular would mean that the council’s government team could only get 11 votes, as opposed to the PP and Ciudadanos representatives mustering 13 votes.
Gómez Magán did not go into specifics as to why her party had pulled out of talks with the government team over supporting the budget, but she said that there was a “lack of confidence” in the governing coalition.
Finance councillor, Jose Hurtado, said he was surprised by the decision, and disappointed to have heard about it in the local media. The two Sueña Torrevieja councillors, who quit the coalition in the autumn, had already declared that they would support the budget, but the Ciudadanos decision leaves the government team short of votes.
The Ciudadanos representatives on Almoradi council last month voted with the PP to bring down the PSOE socialist-led administration, and there has been speculation that the PP has been making similar overtures to Ciudadanos in Torrevieja to bring about a power change.
