The terrace has privileged views. In front, a clean picture of the hill of La Grajela. On the left, a few meters away, the bell tower of the church of San Juan Bautista. On the right, the typical village houses covered with tiles. Only trills are heard, many trills. "I get into politics because this paradise is threatened by a fucking macro-farm," is the first thing our host says, looking at the horizon, when we access its rooftop.

Ángel Corpa is the founder of Jarcha, the musical group that released what is considered the anthem of the Transition: Freedom without anger. He is now, at 70 years old, in another transition, a personal one that has led him from music to embark on politics as head of +Cuenca Now list for the autonomous regions of Castilla-La Mancha. And he has just returned to his town -Barajas de Melo (Cuenca)- after spending a few days in Seville recording another anthem, which will represent all the parties that attend the 28M for the so-called Emptied Spain, as is the case of the brand he represents. "How long will the silence last / of this Spain, which dying is / Emptied, dry and without a future / Bled by adversity", starts the theme of the author of the music and lyrics.

After the success of Teruel Hay -which won a seat in the Congress of Deputies in the 2019 general elections-, and Soria Ya! -three seats in the Cortes of Castilla y León in the regional elections of 2022-, rural Spain has been politically armed in the face of 28-M. Spain Emptied, Aragon Exists, Soria NOW!, Teruel Existe, Cuenca Ahora and Jaén Deserves -organized under the umbrella of the Federation of Parties of Emptied Spain- and some other brand outside this group -such as Por Huelva- are presented to the autonomic ones in four of the 12 communities in which they are celebrated: Aragón, Asturias, La Rioja and Castilla-La Mancha. And to the municipal ones in dozens of localities of at least 15 provinces, waiting for other candidacies to be added: Asturias, La Rioja, Burgos, Palencia, Valladolid, Salamanca, León, Toledo, Zaragoza, Huesca, Toledo, Teruel, Cuenca, Jaén and Huelva. Will they be decisive when it comes to constituting majorities? Will they get any important town halls? Will they have the key in communities where the polls predict a very tight result, such as that of our protagonist, Castilla-La Mancha, with PP and PSOE two or three points away? The parties of the Emptied Spain are the great unknown of 28M.

Before entering the political arena, we review with Ángel Corpa his biography. He was born in 1952 in Barajas de Melo, in a house just around the corner. The father, secretary of the local administration, was transferred first to Cuenca, when he was 9 or 10 years old, and later to Palencia. Corpa soon began in the theater, to the anger of the head of the family, who considered the artistic trades a thing of "people of bad living". Around the year 70 his theater group managed to circumvent censorship and got the níhil óbstat – "there is no objection" – to premiere Smile, Mr. Dictator, by the historic reporter Vicente Romero, at the headquarters of the newspaper Pueblo. The father put him between a rock and a hard place: "If you go to Madrid to do that work, you don't step on this house anymore."

Corpa no longer set foot in the family home in Palencia. He settled in Huelva as an educator in a minor school. There he founded in 1972, with 20 years, Jarcha. Half a century, 20 CDs, 3,800 concerts, a gold record and hundreds of dubs later -he has put voice from the character of Frieza in Dragon Ball to actors of Turkish soap operas-, in 2008 he decided to return to the village where he was born to take care of his mother. When she died, he was trapped by the luxuries offered by Barajas de Melo: "Time, silence and a wonderful landscape that gives me life."

This peace was disturbed by the announcement in 2018 that a macro-farm was intended to be installed in the town. "I think it's 6,200 breeding fences, a shitty factory, a brutal ecological bomb. It takes between 800 and 1,000 hectares to expand the shit they produce, so it doesn't matter which way the wind blows because you eat it fixed. And the people who are going to be employed are not going to settle in the village. Here they would leave us the shit and the wealth would go to Tarancón [20 kilometers] or Madrid, "he says.

Corpa and a few friends, newcomers to Barajas de Melo like him – a historian, a girl who works in Justice, Quique, who is an ecologist and has developed a fungus "that eats cigarette butts" ... – created a neighborhood association against the macrogranja and denounced the project, now paralyzed.

He says that he learned by chance of the celebration in the City Council of the plenary session in which the license for the macro-farm was voted – "here there is a policy of great secrecy". He was, he says, the only resident of the town who attended the plenary. "To my surprise all the councilors [four of the PSOE, three of the PP] raised their hands. A party of the left and a party of the right that normally defend opposing interests by voting unanimously..."

Corpa touches one of the points wielded by the parties of emptied Spain to justify the need for its existence. They want to capitalize on the discontent with the big parties, whom they accuse of not carrying out a policy of proximity, of forgetting the interests of their neighbors to follow the instructions of the national leaderships. "Cuenca Now is a transversal party. There are sensitivities of left and right, but I think we have a lot in common. We have not lost independence and the decisions we make are sovereign because they are not subject to foreign slogans, as is the case of the PSOE and the PP, which receive directives from Toledo, Madrid or wherever, "says Corpa.

We asked Sigma Dos where the presumed voters of Emptied Spain are ideologically inclined, if their participation on 28M hurts the left or the right more. "These parties propose a new axis that skips, or overlaps, the left-right, such as the rural-urban axis," responds José Luis Rojo, deputy director of research at the demoscopic company. "However, their voters come more from urban environments in the provinces, where the rural has great weight, than from the rural area itself, where traditional brands such as PP or PSOE are still the majority. If we maintain, however, the ideological axis, the most plausible hypothesis is that its electorate is more made up of progressive voters, but this may vary according to the area and the candidacy. In Soria and Teruel they have taken votes from the left, which have come especially from the capitals, and it seems that in Huesca they can remove the center right, according to the polls, "he adds.

Ángel Corpa came out very upset from that plenary session in which the macro-farm was approved. The association that had mounted against the project then decided to create a group of voters to present themselves to the municipal elections with the intention of fighting against it from within. Failed. "We needed 15 people registered in the town to go to the Town Hall to give their ID and we only found eight," he says. "There's a lot of fear here. There are mayors with many legislatures that have resulted in caciques, "he says to explain the reason for the lack of success.

They learned then of the existence of Cuenca Ahora and two meetings with them later not only had a municipal candidacy, but the party, knowing the pull that the founder of Jarcha could have, asked Angel Corpa to be their candidate for the regional elections for Cuenca. He said yes.

The province of Cuenca has 152,000 voters and five seats in the autonomous parliament, which has 33. It is estimated that Corpa will need between 16,000 and 20,000 votes to get a seat as a regional deputy and aspire to act as referee between García Page (PSOE) and Paco Núñez (PP).

"I've been blown that it's possible," Corpa says. "People are tired of the old politics and there we can get a share of power that allows us to pull a little bit of the cart for Cuenca."

They are not so optimistic about their chances in Sigma Dos. This is how José Luis Rojo assesses the possibilities of the matches of the Emptied Spain. "We have the precedent of the elections of Castilla y León, where the expectation was wide and, nevertheless, the phenomenon was limited almost exclusively to Soria ¡Ya!, which already existed before the concept of Emptied Spain, but which decides to integrate into it. In La Rioja they are presented as Partido Riojano-España Vaciada and could repeat or slightly improve the result of Partido Riojano, but it does not seem that they will be decisive in the formation of a possible government. In Aragon they are presented as Aragon Exists and could be decisive depending on their results, especially in Huesca and Teruel, due to the drag effect of Teruel Hay at the national level, and not so much because of the umbrella offered by España Vaciada. Beyond this, it seems almost impossible that they have a route in other territories such as Extremadura or Castilla la Mancha, where they have not even been clearly articulated".

Ángel Corpa has a list with the main points of his program, most of them local demands – not to the macro-farms or the waste dumps, the conservation of the Madrid-Cuenca-Valencia railway, in the process of closure, Cuenca-Teruel and Cuenca-Albacete highways, the creation of health centers nearby ... – and a great objective in which all the parties of Emptied Spain agree: The increase of investments in the rural world to fight against depopulation.

Barajas de Melo today has 926 residents – there were 2,400 when Corpa was born – and a density of 6.67 inhabitants per square kilometer. Cuenca -11.67 inhabitants per square kilometer- is together with Teruel and Soria below the 12 inhabitants that, explains Corpa, marks the limit of superdepopulation. "We turn this town, with 40 new families, like a sock," he will say later during a walk along the Calvache River, which is born and dies in the municipality of the town. "A very small river but with two balls, because it never dries up," he says.

  • Basin
  • PSOE
  • Soria
  • Teruel
  • Huelva
  • Huesca
  • Toledo
  • PP
  • Palencia
  • La Rioja
  • Teruel exists
  • Castile-La Mancha
  • Asturias
  • Aragon
  • Castile and Leon
  • Albacete
  • Valence
  • Extremadura
  • Burgos
  • Seville
  • Congress of Deputies
  • Add
  • Valladolid
  • Salamanca
  • Lion
  • Saragossa
  • Jaén (Spain)

According to The Trust Project criteria

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