VOX councillor Victoria Navarro, a lawyer, has announced her resignation from municipal politics, just seven months after she was sworn in before the Municipal Plenary, for reasons, she explains, “strictly professional.”
She appeared as second on the electoral list, so, after her resignation, the list will run and the position will fall to the person running in third position, the construction businessman José Serna Lorente.
The municipal group has sent a letter to the media in which the councillor explains the reasons for her departure, reminding how on June 17 she took office and that, “just two months before,” she assumed he would run in the municipal elections in the ranks of VOX and “with a firm commitment to the centre-right electorate of our city.”
Salvador Ruso was elected by the board of Santiago Abascal’s party after its previous representative, Carolina Vigara, distanced herself from the party’s guidelines and joined the group of councillors not affiliated in the last legislature. Once the elections were called, a candidacy was formed, a split from VOX, headed by the former leader of the party in Torrevieja, José García Juncal, under the name ‘España Viva’. However, he did not obtain representation on the City Council.
The councillor boasts that, despite having “only one month to organise the campaign”, they managed to double the results of the 2019 municipal elections, going from one councillor to two and, “being very close to obtaining a third councillor.
Regarding these “strictly professional” reasons, Navarro explains that “the exponential growth of the legal project that I lead with my husband and partner, Juan Chapapría, requires my full-time dedication.” The councillor had sought to combine her municipal activity with that which she works as a lawyer.
She, consequently, states that she must take full charge of the firm’s delegation in Torrevieja. “Which, in addition, has a decisive impact on social projects and work in the city itself from where I can influence and continue working for my city as much or more than from my current position as a councillor.”
Her husband, Juan Chapapria, as an influential part of the PP in Torrevieja, ran to take over the leadership of the local group against the current mayor, Eduardo Dolón. The choice of Navarro for the elections, in this sense, was understood in the middle of the campaign as a message to the PP and an attempt by VOX to permeate precisely those centre voters, lifelong Torrevieja residents, and who are a traditional fishing ground for votes of the current local government team.
“Although I am retiring from politics, I will remain committed to the well-being and progress of Torrevieja through my work in the legal field,” Navarro says in farewell, saying “politics can only and should be understood as a service.” to others and never as a means to be used.
Her replacement is the businessman José Serna. With business in Brazil, for this native of Oriola living in Torrevieja, this is by no means his first political experience. In the past he was already active in Ciudadanos, a party of which he became coordinator of the local group. He also served and previously led in UPyD. His departure from the Orange Party in 2015 was especially notable for a statement in which he himself denounced that the liberal party was completely permeated by former PP militants.
