Visiting Parliament

I've always been relatively interested in politics, not in any deep intellectual way, but in the way of knowing which side I was on in any political argument.

When we first arrived in Spain, when there was hardly any Internet, when news came in newspapers and on TV and radio, keeping up was tricky. I could read the Spanish papers, finger pointingly slowly, but the spoken news was, initially, incomprehensible gabble. I was quite worried that I would turn from informed to stupid. For months I copied down the names, to try to make sense of the weekly political round-up in English in the Costa Blanca News. Nowadays I know, reasonably well, what's going on politically in Spain but I haven't a clue about the UK.

This year there will be a general, local and regional elections in Spain. This May will be our fifth set of local elections here. We're on nodding terms with a few of the local councillors. One of those is the Pinoso Mayor, Lázaro Azorín. Now Lázaro as well as being our mayor is a deputy, an MP, in the national parliament.

The traditional pattern in the UK is that the politicians are affiliated to a political party and elected to a geographical area. Electors may choose to vote for a political party but, sometimes, and especially at the local level, people vote for personalities; for people they know and trust. The same is true of Spanish voting except that the system for candidates is substantially different; it's much more party based. Electors vote for a list of names put forward by a political party to cover the whole town, not wards, or the whole province, not towns.

The Spanish idea is that for any particular area there are so many seats available. For instance, for the Town Hall in Pinoso there are currently 13 councillors. Alicante province, based on population and other weighting factors, returned 12 deputies to the national parliament. For any election the political parties prepare a list of candidates long enough to fill all the available seats plus a couple of "just in case" extras. If one party were to win 100% of the votes then the party's whole list would be elected. In practice, each party gets a number of seats in proportion to the number of votes they capture. If there were just two parties, and each got the same number of votes, then they would both get the same number of seats. In fact it's much more complicated than that but that's the basic scheme.

This list system means that the political heavyweights are secure; there are never shock defeats. It also means that ordinary voters often only know the people at the top of the list. The list system also avoids by-elections. If one of the elected members dies or resigns then there is a ready made successor, waiting in the wings. It does mean though that, if the party you favour ideologically puts forward someone you disapprove of for any reason, you have to decide between person and party.

Lázaro was top of the list for the socialists in Pinoso. In the 2019 elections his party won 10 of the 13 Pinoso seats. Lázaro was also number five on the list of candidates for election to the national government from Alicante province. His party won sufficient votes to return four national deputies to Madrid. So Lázaro just missed getting in. Later the number one on that list, an ex astronaut and government minister, resigned his parliamentary seat. The reasoning was relatively complex but it was to do with ensuring a secure parliamentary vote in a minority coalition government. With that resignation Lazaró, as next in line, became a national deputy. He decided to continue as Mayor of Pinoso but he gave up his local salary.

We know Lázaro a bit. He says hello in the street. I was talking to him a while ago about his dual role and he said that if we were ever in Madrid we should ask him to arrange a visit to the Congreso de los Diputados, the lower house of the national parliament. We had plans to go to Madrid, I asked, and Lázaro was as good as his word. He arranged for us to visit.

We got to sit in the gallery and watch the debate about changing the "Sí es Sí", law, basically anti rape legislation that went wrong because of dodgy legal drafting. Convicted sex offenders have been getting early release on appeal. The resulting political storm has played into the hands of the right of centre parties and stretched the limits of the leftist governing coalition. Maggie and I were sitting in the visitor's gallery, during the debate, political personality spotting. When there was a bit of a break in the voting Lázaro gave us a quick tour of the Congress from committee rooms, offices and underground tunnels to the cafeteria. He left us to our own devices when he went to vote for the final, and in my mind flawed, version of the revised law. After the vote the building emptied and we were able to visit parts of the building that we see all the time on the TV news including the main debating chamber, the hemiciclo.

I should say that it's reasonably easy to get to visit the parliament. There are regular slots for visits and slots can be arranged online but getting the personalised tour was just brilliant.