After it emerged that he had been vaccinated, at the end of January 2021 the PP opened a file on Novo. She wasted no time in requesting her removal as a member. Already then, the opposition expressed its suspicions that all these movements sought to give the appearance of a break between the party and the councilor, but that nothing would change in Boimorto, a small municipality near Santiago. In the debate disapproving of the mayoress in the midst of the controversy, the Popular Party councilors voted in support of Novo. “It looks very nice in the headlines of the newspapers that the mayoress of Boimorto leaves the PP, but what they do not say is that they are still in the municipal group of the PP and that you are the ones who have the power to evict her from the mayor’s office,” he recriminated. Sandra Sánchez, from the PSOE. The BNG spokesman, Xosé Luis ‘Mini’ Rivas, took it for granted that the strategy was to pretend to distance himself in order to, “after two years”, admit it again “and nothing happens here”. The error in his prediction is limited to the fact that the councilor has not re-registered within the Popular Party.

Since then, Novo has continued to participate in meetings to which the mayors and spokesmen of the PP in the province of A Coruña are called. In the press release issued after one of these meetings, in which the local representatives of the Santiago judicial district participated in early October 2022, a photo is included in which the mayoress of Boimorto is seen sitting in the front row . In the center is the president of the PP in the province of A Coruña, Diego Calvo, also second vice president in the Xunta. It is the image that accompanies this information. In full preparations for the municipal elections of May 2023, the mayoress figured openly in the acts of the PP, which calculates the possibilities of returning to govern the Diputación de A Coruña, currently in the hands of the PSOE and the BNG.

Novo received the first dose of the vaccine in January 2021. At that time, the drug was in short supply and a strict order had been established to distribute the first doses. The first to receive it had to be the people who lived in nursing homes and the professionals in charge of assisting them, as well as the teams of nurses who gave the injections. The Xunta had prepared closed lists in which each of the people who were going to receive the puncture each day was identified by name. The health teams carried amounts adjusted to these lists to try not to waste serum. It was in this context that the mayoress of Boimorto, not related to the medical profession and exclusively dedicated to the City Council, received the vaccine. She argued that her name was included in the municipal residence shift because she was “staff” from the center. “I have a working relationship because I go there every day,” she told this newsroom at the time.

In those days, other cases of politicians who had received the drug had been known. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who was in charge of the Xunta and the Galician PP, considered that the charges that were vaccinated outside the protocol should resign. Then he also asked them to resign if they appeared on the list when it was not their turn. They were the first of the many critical statements from his own party with the mayoress of Boimorto. The suspension of militancy followed. The parliamentary spokesman, Pedro Puy, even asked her to resign as councilor for a matter of “exemplary” and to leave office to someone who had complied with the codes of conduct.

The mayoress, however, remained in office. Not only that: despite the messages from those responsible for the party at the Galician level, the reality was that she continued to receive the support of her PP colleagues in the City Council to carry out the voting. In May, the PP ballot will once again be that of Novo.

When the vaccination campaign against COVID-19 was beginning and there were limited doses that were used to immunize the elderly in residences, the mayoress of Boimorto, a small municipality near Santiago, María Jesús Novo, also received the injection, although it was not his turn yet. With the storm unleashed, the Popular Party suspended her from militancy. In her statements, the cadres of her party turned their backs on her, but in her town hall they continued to support her then and all this time. Now the conservative formation recovers her as a candidate for the municipal elections in May of this year. She has not joined the PP again, but it is not necessary and she will be the head of her list. “She is our candidate,” confirm party sources.

The PP of Galicia asks the mayoress who was vaccinated to resign and leave office to someone who has respected the protocol

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