You know, it doesn't matter if you don't follow politics, because politics follows you; you'll see why in the electoral outcome, come May.

If you live in Almuñécar or La Herradura, for instance, jostling for the Mayoralty was played out on the roof terrace of Hotel Helios on the Paseo San Cristóbal.

The Mayor, Juan José Ruiz Joya, presented his team for the municipal elections.

In effect, the coalition, he announced, will be absorbed by his party; the Ciudadanos councillor will ditch her sinking party and join the ranks of the PP. Más Almuñécar, will fly in close formation with the PP but maintain its own ‘flag.’ And all this is to do with keeping Benavides out of the Mayor’s chair.

Councillor Beatriz González (C’s) knows that her party will disappear right across Spain, so her jumping ship is no surprise, but Más Almuñécar councillor, Luis ‘many-hats’ Aragón is slightly more complicated. He used to be Benavides’ right-hand man but they had a serious falling out some 15 years ago and the hate between them is visceral. However, he knows that his party still has ‘plenty of legs’ on it, which is why he doesn’t want to jump ship and because, more than likely, he doesn’t trust the PP.

The last is the PP’s unlikely ally, far-left IU Podemos, which also has a personality problem with Benavides over Fermín’s Tejero’s old business, Camping Carambola, whom Benny gave a hard, hard time. So you have a far-left party quite happily in bed with the conservative PP because of personal issues rather than political ones.

With all this personal-scores-to-settle dragging the ideological direction of party off course, do they expect their followers to keep voting for them? I mean, if you are far-left minded, are you going to vote for a party that supposedly represents your political leaning, if you know that your vote actually ends up in the conservative pocket?

The same goes for Más Almuñécar, which supposedly has no political slant other than for Almuñécar to prosper, but in reality it’s all about keeping Benavides out – the trouble is, half of Almuñécar wants him in, which is why they need to join forces to prevent this. Whether that is Democracy, is another question.

(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)