The Abertzale left took over the Pamplona City Hall square early on the cold Thursday morning to recreate a Sanfermin in honor of Joseba Asiron. A precisely organized festive trompe l'oeil. A large Bildu security team led by Iker Rodrigo - former head of Jarrai - controlled that the pseudo-festive atmosphere framed the "new time" personified in the kind ikastola professor who will govern the capital of Navarra until 2027. Bildu's security operation It was coordinated through a radio station and communicated through earpieces. Agents of the National and Local Police who guarded the square watched the display in disbelief. The tension over a possible confrontation between followers of the nationalist left and UPN militants was diluted when the 12 chimes of the Pamplona City Hall clock were muffled by the music of a brass band that was activated when Rodrigo's team gave the order.
The control exercised by Bildu in almost everything that happened in the Town Hall square was absolute an hour before Koldo Martínez (Geroa Bai) started the plenary session as president of the old table. Cristina Ibarrola, the outgoing mayor and protagonist of the plenary session, had arrived at 8 in the morning, when the thermometer did not exceed 0 degrees Celsius. After 11 in the morning, her partner and president of UPN Javier Esparza dared to cross a square crowded with nationalist supporters. "Shhhhhh!" was ordered from different positions in the square and Esparza crossed between his intimate political enemies without an insult, an unusual fact in the investitures in Pamplona.
Bildu's precise machinery contrasted with the presence of two militants, two from the Democratic Platform, the group that had requested to demonstrate in the Plaza de los Burgos against the "nonsensical" move of making Asiron mayor of Pamplona. Not even the presence of several dozen UPN militants - relegated to a corner of the square next to the Mercaderes slope - altered Bildu's control of the public space while a symbolic battle began in the plenary hall between Koldo Martínez (councilman of Geroa Bai in which the PNV is integrated) and Cristina Ibarrola.
The scuffle, like what was happening in the square, seemed like one thing to hide another very different thing. Martínez announced that the times assigned to Asiron and Ibarrola to intervene would be 6 minutes each. UPN spokesperson and ETA victim María Caballero protested because it had been agreed that they would last 10 minutes. An agreement that was communicated to the municipal secretary and that the senior official confirmed. But Martínez - supported by Bildu, the PSOE and Podemos - used authoritarianism to make it clear to the still mayor Ibarrola that he was the one in charge in that plenary session. "And get used to it," snapped the Geroa councilor Bai, already integrated into Mayor Asiron's Government Board. That “get used to it” was the key to the message from Martínez, Asiron and Txema Mauleón (Vamos) to UPN. The regionalists only found, political paradoxes, the explicit support of Carlos García Adanero, their former UPN deputy in Congress who harshly attacked PSOE and Bildu and remembered the 27 victims of ETA in Pamplona.
Despite his displeasure, Ibarrola extended his hand to Asiron and kept his word by leaving through the main door under escort. His only blemish in an impeccable finale was committed when, to underline his refusal to accept Bildu's support, he stated that he would rather "scrub stairs" before. Hours later and on social networks he clarified his unfortunate expression.
