The Town Council in Pinoso

One nice thing about living in a small Spanish town is that it's pretty easy to be on nodding terms with most of the local councillors. Not that it's really such a great thing but at least it means you can appear integrated when you have visitors from the old country. I often think it must be quite difficult for them, the councillors that is, not the visitors, because they have no easy escape. I saw one councillor, for instance, obviously in a hurry and trying to buy a couple of things from a local supermarket yet he was being harangued by someone, most forthrightly, about something. 

There are thirteen councillors in Pinoso. As with all Spanish municipalities the number of councillors is determined by population. The way it's done, in most, is that there are population bands that determine the number of councillors. Pinoso has between 5,001 and 10,000 inhabitants so it gets thirteen councillors just like Banyeres de Mariola with a population of 7,255 people. It's always an uneven number. Madrid has fifty seven, a village with a population under one hundred gets three.

At the moment all of Pinoso's councillors are from political parties with a national presence. In the past some councillors were from local parties. The Socialists, the PSOE, Partido Socialista Obrero Español is in power with eight councillors and a clear majority. The centre right Partido Popular, the Popular Party, has three councillors and the extreme right, VOX, has two councillors. 

The voting system in Spain is based on political parties and lists. Each party puts forward a list with sufficient names to cover all the potential seats up for grabs often with a couple of supplementary names that may provide a bit of extra publicity. At the national level the party will put its "stars" at the head of lists in different locations. At the local level that list of names will be known to a lot of the electorate. At the regional and national level it's very unlikely that most people will know anything about the people on the list with the possible exception of that first, star, name. Only the politically very aware will know anyone further down the list. Who gets elected depends on a complicated mathematical formula that is designed to provide a form of proportional representation based on the votes cast. This means that the voting pattern in the local and national elections can be quite different because people choose to vote for the party nationally and for people they trust locally. For instance, last time around, in 2023, there were local and general elections but at different times. The hypothetical makeup of the Pinoso Town Council, based on the General Election results, would have seen the PP in power with seven seats. PSOE would have got four and VOX, two instead of the actual PSOE majority.

The term of office for a council is four years. The last elections were in 2023 and the next ones will be on Sunday May 23rd 2027. When the councillors have been elected the council meets to elect a mayor. If one party has a clear majority then it will usually elect the mayor. Where no one party is able to govern alone the parties horse trade until they have the necessary majority to elect a mayor and to form the governing council. In Pinoso with the clear PSOE majority the party elected Lázaro Azorín as Mayor. Once the makeup of the council is known then the councillors in the ruling party, or coalition, are given various responsibilities - education, health, employment etc. I've put the list with the current councillors and their responsibilities at the bottom. Some of the responsibilities were difficult to translate into English.

Lázaro, the mayor, has a second job, he's also a PSOE Diputado in the Congreso de los Diputados in Madrid. For we Britons he's the equivalent of an MP. Lázaro was number five on the PSOE's list for the 2019 General Election as a potential diputado from Alicante. The PSOE won sufficient proportion of the votes in the province for them to send four deputies to Madrid. Later, when the head of the list, Pedro Duque, Science Minister and ex astronaut, resigned (for tactical voting reasons in parliament) Lazaro, as next name on the list, became an MP. In the 2023 elections Lazaro was number three on the lists and he was elected on the proportion of the vote won by his party.

It is the council itself that decides on the payment levels, expenses etc. for the various councillors, though there are guidelines to avoid profiteering. I kept a note of the salaries reported after a council meeting in 2023. I wanted to make sure I was fair in mentioning those salaries here but I cannot find any reference to salary on the labyrinthine Pinoso Town Hall website. There's a section on the website called municipal transparency, transparencia municipal, but I find it somewhat less than transparent! Anyway, given that this information will probably have changed over the intervening years, and given that it may never have been correct, you should take this information as potentially inaccurate. I think that four of the councillors get paid a full salary, for a full working week, and four get paid a partial salary, equivalent to working about 10 hours per week. The full time salaries range from a bit above 48,000€ down to a bit below 34,000€ with the partial contracts paying around 11,000€ per year. 

So far as I know Lazaro waived his salary as mayor because he gets paid as a diputado. Actually he gets paid less as an MP than he would as mayor (a diputado gets a bit below 44,000€ a year according to Perplexity.ai) but they also get tax free expenses of around 24,000€ a year if their "constituency" is outside Madrid and quite a few other perks from taxi allowances to travel costs. Again, according to Perplexity.ai most common or garden MPs get paid between 4,000€ and 5,000€ per pay cheque remembering that, in Spain, most workers get 14 payments in a year.

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Pinoso Town Council

Lázaro Azorín Salar: Mayor.

Silvia Verdú Carrillo: Culture and Youth, Staff, Treasury, Education, Waste, Agriculture, Police, Civil Protection and Traffic, Forestry and Quarries

María José Moya Vidal: Social Services, Equality and LGTBI+, Protocol, Health, Pinoso Social and Health Associations, Local Media

César Pérez Cascales: Senior Citizens, Archive and Library, Heritage and Historical Memory, Foreigners, Citizen Participation, Social and Health Care Collectives

Neus Ochoa Rico: Local development, Tourism, Trade and Commerce, Markets and Consumer Affairs, Cleaning of Public Buildings 

José Ángel Pérez Verdú: Parks and Gardens, Outlying Settlements, Roads, Water and Water Resources, New Building, Technology and Street Cleaning

Elisa Santiago Tortosa: Fiestas

Raúl Pérez Albert: Cemetery Industry, Housing, Street Lighting and Urban Development

Another talking politics post

It's strange how the same thing has more or less value depending on your own thoughts and when you have them.

I was listening to some high up politician from Navarre (an area of Spain) on the wireless. She was going on about how her right of centre party had done well because it had picked up more votes in the last election. I won't extrapolate on her model by pointing out that her party came second. Instead I'll pick up on her complaint about a Catalan party that probably holds the key to the formation of the next Spanish Government. The party in question are Catalan separatists, they want some form of autonomy, nationhood even, for their region.

So the Navarre woman says her party's votes give them legitimacy. She argues that Cataluña is an integral part of Spain. By her own reasoning the people who live in Cataluña are Spanish and, in Cataluña this separatist party got sufficient votes, enough to make them potential kingmakers. But, for the woman from Navarre, the party that won most votes, and is looking to form a government, shouldn't talk to this separatist party because their votes are less valid than some other votes. She didn't try to suggest that the winning party's votes were bad votes, worth less than votes for her party, but she did argue that the separatist votes were worse; tainted votes, less valuable votes, wrong votes. I listen to this and wonder why the journalist interviewing her doesn't point out this massive contradiction, this illogical behaviour.

I hear, time and time again, politicians pointing out that certain things can't be talked about because they are unconstitutional. If the law says that Spain is indivisible there can be no conversation about it being divisible. That would be illegal. But, worldwide, lots of things that used to be legal are now illegal and lots of things that were legal are now illegal - pit bulls without muzzles being one example and Elton John and David Furnish being another. Changing laws, changing constitutions, happens all the time.

In 1933 a Republican (left wing) government in Spain introduced a law of "Vagos y Maleantes" the Law of Layabouts and Thieves. Basically this law said that if you were a ne'r do well you could expect trouble - trouble if you were gypsy or gay or workshy or uppity about working conditions or lived in a dodgy council estate and sold scrap. Over the years this law became associated with the Dictatorship, with Franco, but it was there before him and, with a changed name and all sorts of modifications it was still there in 1995 - twenty years after Franco drew his last and descended into the fiery pit. That law was dropped in 1995 because, somehow, people became to believe it was wrong and bad and made no sense. For 62 years though it was law. It was right. Now it's wrong. Just like the Constitution is right and the Basques and Catalans are wrong.

Good votes, bad votes, legal things, illegal things, fixed positions, immovable barriers. I've heard that humankind is on a collision course with disaster. I wonder how that happened?

Honestly I started writing about garden hoes

You'll remember we had a general election in April and regional and municipal elections at the end of May. The trend was that the socialists, the PSOE, did well, the far left, Podemos, did badly, the traditional right, PP, plummeted and the centrists, Ciudadanos or Cs, did well but not as well as they hoped. The new far right party, Vox, won a substantial number of seats but without the huge surge they were expecting.

The municipalities have now been sorted out with their councils constituted, the regional governments are nearly all done but the first attempt at forming the new national government won't start till July 22nd. Greased lightning it is not.

Spain, has generally, since the return to democracy, had a two party state. More accurately two big players plus a number of important regional movements and some smaller national parties. Recently the maths had changed. Deciding who might govern a city, a region or a country became some sort of "what if" arithmetic challenge.

Now I'm not up to keeping tabs on all of the regional and town hall discussions but the impression I get is that this sort of manoeuvring is going on all over Spain. The fragmentation of the vote has tended towards a version of political Sudoku that has allowed people to get into power simply by perming their seats in the most illogical way often with a contemptuous disregard for voter intention. You know the sort of thing. A party takes a thrashing, it loses half of its old seats but by banding together with some strange bedfellows it can cling on to power. The obvious "winners" have not been able to consolidate their moral victory with a clear majority of seats in the local council or regional parliament.

Our town borders on Murcia so we notice what happens there. Murcia is a good example of this political wheeler dealing. Since 1995 Murcia, the Region, has had a conservative government. In the recent elections the socialists got 17 seats in the regional assembly narrowly beating the conservatives with 16. The conservative PP had 22 last time. Podemos went down by four from 6 to 2, Ciudadanos went up from 4 to 6 and Vox came from nowhere with 4. Given your point of view you could decide to stress the move to the left (the PSOE won), to the centre (loss of seats for Podemos, more seats for Ciudadanos) or to the right (new seats for Vox, a still solid vote for the traditional PP right and an increased vote to the right leaning centrists of Ciudadanos). You can also choose to complain about the proportional representation system, Cs got 6 seats with 150,000 votes yet Vox only got 4 seats despite getting 143,000 votes. Then you start to look for alliances.

The majority to control the Murcian Regional Government is 23 and so the parties have been dealing. It looked as though the PP and Cs were going to form the government with Vox backing them at vote time. But there was a problem in other locations, away from Murcia, and Vox, suspecting that they were being diddled out of any power, suddenly decided not to support the PP. That meant the potential coalition in Murcia has fallen apart for today at least. Exactly the same is happening in Madrid.

Oh, and something else that I really don't understand is the part that Ciudadanos has been playing in this game. Being simplistic about this the Cs have usually been considered to be centrist. But, for some reason best known to themselves, Ciudadanos this time has decided to be right wing. They campaigned on the right and they have said that they will never do deals with the socialists. It's not a stance I understand. It seems to me, given that the vote is so fragmented, if they stuck to the centre they would be in the perfect place to deal. Without compromising their principles, without letting down their voters, they could ask both the left and the right if they'll give them the things they want, the things they promised their voters. Whichever side offers the best deal gets their support.

I'm sure I read something about that in Politics for Beginners, Chapter 1.

Oh, and honestly. I started to write about weeding by pushing rather than pulling but some strange force gripped my keyboard fingers.

You got the SP, now the results

Just in case you're interested the socialists, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), had a good election. They gained 38 seats and now have 123 seats in the lower house of parliament (they also won the upper house). On the other hand the conservative Partido Popular (PP) had a disastrous day. They lost 71 seats down from 137 to 66. Anyone want to give me odds on the survival of their recently elected leader?

On the left Unidas Podemos (UP) dropped 29 seats to 42  and on the right Ciudadanos (Cs) gained 25 to 57. To the shame of Spain and Spaniards the ultra right party VOX went from nothing to 24 parliamentary seats.

Another eight parties won representation in the lower house. Most of them have a regional flavour - Catalans, Basques, Valencians, Navarrese etc. The biggest of these, with 15 seats in the Congress, is Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, ERC, which is headed up by a politician who is currently in prison for his part in the dodgy Catalan referendum.

There are 350 seats in the Congress so 176 seats are needed for a majority (minority governments can be elected but only if, in the investiture vote, they get a majority either through abstentions or through one off support). The right: PP, Cs and VOX, even lumped together, can't get anywhere close.

For the head of the PSOE, Pedro Sanchez, to get the 176 seats he needs to be President the only (reasonably possible) single party that could help him do that is Ciudadanos because they vacillate around the centre ground sufficiently to be philosophically compatible. Even though the pundits say the chances are icicle in hell there could well be lots of external pressure to push for that unlikely pairing.

The natural bedfellow for Pedro and the PSOE is Unidas Podemos but, between them, they are short of the magic number. Add in the other independent groups with similar philosophical leanings and the alliance is still one short. So Pedro needs to talk to some of the independents to get there and that is dodgy political ground. The alternative, and a real possibility, is that he will try to go it alone as a minority government in which case he will have to horse trade over every single initiative.

We shall see.

Just to round things off the elections yesterday were national.  The local elections come next month. The political "constituencies" for the General Election are the provinces but votes are collected on a municipal basis. So, just for information, Pinoso voted like this: PP and PSOE had a dead heat with 1,013 votes each, Cs got 839, VOX 503, UP 501 and Compromis (a Valencian group) got 56. The animal rights party got 39 votes. That's a good result for the PSOE in a town which is traditionally PP for the General Elections.

We also had elections for the regional government here in the Comunitat Valenciana. There are 99 seats in the local parliament so it's 50 seats for the majority. The PSOE (and its local version the PSPV) got 27 seats, PP 20, Cs 18, Compromis 18, VOX 10 and UP 8. For the last Valencian administration the PSOE, Compromis and Podem (local version of UP) formed the government. They could do the same again after yesterday's results.

2019 General Elections in Pinoso

I don't get a vote in the General Elections here in Spain. Nonetheless I popped out to the three polling stations in Pinoso to have a bit of a nosey. I took the photos as soon as I arrived and I only stayed a few minutes just to see what numbers were like. The polling stations looked busy to me though it was mid morning, a good time, especially as the church had just chucked out.

This lot of elections are the thirteenth since democracy was restored in the late 1970s and the fifth set that we've been here for. We've lived under only three of the, so far seven democratic presidents.

Anything is possible, results wise, and coalition wise but it's likely, according to the polls, that the socialist Pedro Sanchez will be returned to power as the head of a coalition with left wing Unidas Podemos and possibly some of the Nationalist groups. There is even speculation that the socialists could form a coalition with the right of centre Ciudadanos party. Who knows? It's much more likely though that Ciudadanos will throw their lot in with the conservative Partido Popular, headed up by recently appointed, Pablo Casado. His chances of becoming president are increased if the racist, homophobic, peddlers of populist myths, Vox, (Hello Farage and Brexit fans) burst onto the political scene as the polls suggest and then support the PP.

We also have regional elections today for the Valencian Community. I don't get a vote in that either.

Vote early, vote often

Many years ago - strange how all my stories start like that - I was at a Conservative Club fundraiser in North Yorkshire. I have no defence, I was just there - no kidnapping, no drugs, nothing. I spent a long few minutes talking to a relatively powerful politician of the time, Baron Brittan of Spennithorne or Leon Brittan as he was called then. I was talking to him about voting and how it was a flawed tool. I argued that voting gives you one chance, every few years, to choose between a couple of, or if you're lucky a few, electable groupings with which you share some opinions. He argued that choosing a band and sticking by them was the mark of a strong democracy. We didn't come to an agreement but he did buy me a drink.

It's the only tool that democracy gives us though, not the drink, the vote. The only other thing that might work is getting out in the street with a banner or a Molotov cocktail depending on your preference.

I got a vote in the referendum about the UK leaving Europe. I was on the losing side. Here in Spain, as a resident and a European Citizen, I have been able to vote in two lots of local municipal elections. Neither Spain nor the UK allows me to vote at a regional level but the UK system allowed me a vote in the last couple of General Elections and in Europe. I'm about to lose that vote for having been absent from Britain for fifteen years. My country is about to leave the European Union anyway so it looked like I was going to lose my Spanish vote too. Disenfranchised everywhere.

Hope springs eternal though. We have elections here in May and, when I heard an advert on the radio, advising EU citizens to get themselves on the voting register, I went to the local Town Hall and checked I was still registered. The people behind the desk thought I was barmy but they rang the central register and confirmed I was on the electoral roll. Whether that would do me any good after March 29 was a moot point. Then, the other day, a rather ambiguous letter from Pinoso Town Hall said that EU citizens should signal their wish to be on the voting list by filling in a form. It had to be done before 30 January. We're still EU citizens at the moment so Maggie and I went to the Town Hall and signed the form yesterday. The same day I read that the UK had signed a bilateral agreement with Spain to maintain the voting rights of Spaniards in the UK and Brits in Spain.

So I'd like to thank Robin Walker and Marco Aguiriano for signing on the dotted line on behalf of their respective governments and so keeping me in the game.

Off to the polls

General election today in Spain. I'm sure you know. The fact that polling day is Sunday here and Thursday in the UK piqued my interest. Do you know that the UK and India are the only countries in the world where the vote is on a Thursday? Worldwide, Sunday is by far the most popular day.

We had elections back in December. The old party duopoly that has existed more or less since the return to Democracy here collapsed. The Partido Popular, the most right wing of the big parties, won most seats in the parliament but they didn't have anything like a majority. Their leader is a bloke called Mariano Rajoy. He looks a bit doddery and he's got a beard. One of his favourite tactics is to wait and see. The Partido Socialista Obrero Español, the standard left wing party that stopped being left wing years ago came second but only just. The lowest vote for them in their recent history. It was the first election for their newish leader called Pedro Sanchez. He looks pretty dynamic, big smile, reasonable dress sense. One of his favourite tactics is to sound resolute and complain about other politicians. Next up was Podemos. This group are sometimes described as anti system, sometimes anti austerity and sometimes as communists in the Venezuelan, Cuban mould. Their leader is a bloke with a pony tail and a wispy beard in the stereotypical social worker university lecturer style. His method is to be forthright and just a normal sort of person even if that person has got a bit different ideas - like your vegan pal. This lot like to repeat phrases over and over again so they stick with the voters. They suggest something radical to solve most things but then tend to soften the radicalism. The media don't like Podemos much. Last up but still with a sizeable block of votes was Ciudadanos. There was a lot of debate when they first started to show in the opinion polls as to whether they were left or right. The general view seemed to be sort of right leaning but when the horse trading started after the December 2015 elections they teamed up with the (sort of) leftist PSOE. Their man, Albert Rivera looks like the sort of boy that your mum hopes your sister will hook up with. He knows when not to wear a tie with his suit. Trying to think of his political tactics I can't remember him doing or saying anything. Must be my memory.

Anyway so in the end, apart from Ciudadanos teaming up with the PSOE nobody would budge so nobody had enough seats to form a government. There are a few regional parties and there were possible combinations but policy differences stopped it happening. and that's why it's back to the ballot box.

For this election the one major difference is that Podemos have partnered up with the stump of the old Communist Party. Spain has a proportional representation system but it's territorial so, as in the UK, parties can still pick up lots of votes but not turn those into seats. Izquierda Unida found itself in that position last time as the fifth most voted party but with just a couple of deputies. The new electoral coalition Unidos Podemos might gain an advantage from that and the talk is as to whether they can unseat the PSOE as the second most voted party.

Pinoso, last time out, was solid PP. I don't get a vote of course though Podemos say they would like to give me one. Brexit may give me one too but in a more roundabout way! I went in to town to have a look at the voting stations. They all seemed to be doing a brisk trade even though the prediction is for a low turnout because of election fatigue. Obviously election campaigns have changed recently. Posters and public meetings are a bit old hat so it's difficult to spot obvious signs on the streets and although Twitter, Facebook and the media are alive with the stuff they would be, wouldn't they? In fact I've just realised that not a single Spaniard has mentioned the election today to me.

Anyway we'll know soon enough. Results overnight.

And the results were: The PP increased their majority. The PSOE came in second but with the lowest ever number of deputies. Podemos and Izquierda Unida got the same number of seats as before and came in third. Ciudadanos lost seats but came in a strong fourth. This was with about 98% of the votes counted so there may be detail changes. In Pinoso the PP won easily. PSOE second and Podemos third.

Locked out

It must have been the 1964 general election. I walked on to the Town Hall Square in Elland to see Harold Macmillan speak. I would have been ten at the time. I've always been strangely drawn to political meetings.

Shortly after democracy was restored to Spain in 1977 the pattern soon settled into the usual two party - leftish, rightish - seesaw. The last time, in 2011, it was the turn of the right. There are several regional parties which have strong representation in the national parliament but their power base is in their home regions. Otherwise there were really just a couple of smaller national parties. A harder left party has, traditionally, been the third largest national party and, in 2007, a breakaway socialist politician formed a new centrist party. To put that into figures at the last general elections it was 185 seats to the PP (conservatives), 110 to the PSOE (socialists), 11 to the Left, 5 to the Centrists, 21 to Catalan and Basque groups and 18 to the rest

Then suddenly, last year, there was a group called Podemos which is often described as an anti austerity party though they are clearly hardish left. They surprised everyone by picking up five European seats just three months after their official launch. Current "intention to vote" polls have them neck and neck with the big two but, after relentless media pressure, they seem to be losing some of their gleam. Almost as suddenly there was another party, Ciudadadanos, on the scene. They come from a regional party formed in Catalonia in 2006 which went national in 2013 and got a couple of MEPs last year. They seemed to be just another small party but then suddenly their name was cropping up everywhere. Their politics are hard to pin down, they're definitely not for Catalan Independence, they suggest they are a bit left though lots of commentators place them to the right. The polls have Ciudadanos in a close fourth place. So from a two horse race less than a year ago we now have four and a half serious contenders.

I vote for the European Parliament through a Spanish ballot box. At the national level I get to vote in England. At regional level I am denied a vote in either my own or my adopted country and at the local level I vote in Spain.

The Spanish Town Hall Elections are on May 24th. The official campaign season hasn't started yet but the various parties are presenting their lists of candidates now. Our current council has the socialist PSOE in charge in coalition with a local party called the PSD. The opposition is made up of the conservative PP, a local party called UCL and BLOC d'el Pinos which is a local branch of a Valencian Nationalist group.

For 2015 the choice is a bit different. We have the same PSOE, Partido Socialista Obrero Español, the same PP, Partido Popular, a renamed version of BLOC now in a wider coalition called BLOC Comprmís, the Partido Democrata Pinoso Independiente, PDPI, which appears to be a renaming of the local PSD and then Ciudadanos, the relatively new national grouping mentioned above.

I couldn't get to either the PSOE or PDPI candidate presentations. Tonight it was the turn of the PP. Their meeting was advertised for 8.30pm and as I don't finish teaching my last class till 8pm in a town some 30km away from Pinoso it was going to be a bit tight. Spanish events tend to start late though so when I rolled up outside the building at 8.45 I reckoned I would be fine. The car park looked a bit quiet though, there was nobody milling about, the door was firmly locked. I gave up and came home.

I notice from the reports on the Town Hall website that the PP meeting took place in the Auditorium not the Interpretation Centre as billed. I'm sure the change was advertised somewhere.

Now I can't pretend I put a lot of effort into my planning for the event. All I did was to add the dates and places to my diary that came with a leaflet called Municipal Elections 2015 produced by the Municipal Means of Communication but I do hope that the rest of my election campaign goes just a little more smoothly.

Scotty, beam me up!

I went to vote. I hunted through the thirty nine piles of candidate lists till I found the one I wanted, pushed it in the envelope, had fun with the spelling of my name at the voting table and that was my part played in the democratic process for another couple of years.

There was though another envelope and another ballot box for the consulta popular - a sort of referendum organised by the local town hall. More fun, more democracy.

The first question was whether we wanted to make Pinoso a Slow City giving priority to bikes and pedestrians and limiting motor vehicles to 30 kph. The second question asked us to prioritise upgrading a road to a local shrine, constructing a walking and running route around the town or building bike lanes between the town centre and the outlying villages.

Fair enough. I wondered why those particular schemes but I thought it was relatively clever to use the election turnout to canvas opinion. Afterwards though I considered what a cumbersome process traditional voting is. It would certinly slow down declaring the Eurovision winner if the system relied on polling stations.

One of the election manifestos I read yesterday, published only on the party's website, said that it cost about two million euros for an election mailshot to every voter in Spain. There must be lots of similar costs with all the palaver of voting slips and their counting not to mention the cost to individuals of travelling to a central location to vote. It can't be long before some much less cumbersome system takes over from the sort of systems that I have experienced all my adult life, can it?

Then of course they'll be able to ask us if we want the road up to Fatima tarmacking at the cost of the cycle ways or the exercise track whenever they want.

Mr Angry

Recently I have had a bit of a spate of sending Mr Angry letters - well emails - to various organisations in Spain. Generally they have been specific complaints. Problems with the operation of a bank website or some problem with bill payments for instance

I think Barclays, for their Spanish Barclaycard, have an almost foolproof system. I sent an email to ask a general question about the functioning of their redesigned website. They sent me a guffy response telling me that they were unable to respond to an open email for reasons of security and that I should phone customer services. By return I composed a long and snotty email telling them what I thought about their customer service via email. I got exactly the same response as to my initial message. Hmm, I thought. I sent another email wishing them a pleasant day. They told me that they were unable to respond to an open email for reasons of security and that I should phone customer services.

That's a great trick. Give the impression that they can be contacted by email when they can't. That's why there's the rhyming slang for bankers I suppose.

The European Union continues to update me periodically on my bid to be able to vote at regional elections either in my country of residence or in the country where I was born. I think that's jolly nice of them. They do seem to have had a lot of meetings all over Europe to talk about it though.

I collected my mail today and in my PO box there was a letter from the Subsecretary General of the Subsecretariat of the Interior Ministry Department of Human Resources and Inspection Isabel Borrel Roncales. I think it has a real signature. It is a response to an email that I sent to complain about a proposal for a draconian piece of anti democratic legislation. Isabel tells me that it's nothing to do with me and that the equivalent of the Commons in the UK, las Cortes Generales "in which National Sovereignty resides" will make the decision with or without my help thank you very much.

Now this is not a good response. Much better that she had said "Crikey Chris, I showed your email to the President; he clasped his head as he realised what a big mistake he was making and he decided then and there to scrap the legislation. He wants to thank you personally for pointing out the error of his ways."

But it is a response. Well done the Interior Ministry I say. More responsive than Barclays that's for sure.

Las Lamparillas

The best route home from Cartagena to Culebrón passes close by the town of Fortuna. Alongside the ring road the gaunt skeletons of hundreds of unfinished houses bear witness to the folly of the Spanish building boom. The planned development, built in the bone dry scrubland that surrounds Fortuna, was to be called Fortuna Hill Nature and Residential Golf Resort.

 A key part of the new resort was the Las Lamparillas development. It was aimed at golf playing Britons who weren't quite rich enough to buy a similar place on the coast and was planned to have 3,737 houses when complete. There were other agreements for other developments in Fortuna. If everything had gone as planned Fortuna's population would have increased from 10,000 to 100,000.

A research project carried out by a local university in 2004 gives some idea as to the scale of the building work planned. Across Murcia, a region with just one and a half million inhabitants, there were agreements to build 800,000 houses. The figures never made sense but nobody seemed to notice before everything went pear shaped.

Work on Las Lamaprillas, which was just part of the whole resort, started in 2007. By 2010 the principal developer of the site went bust with debts of some 120,000,000€. The banks that had loaned the money took the valueless site and the part completed houses as payment. Nobody, not the banks, not the courts and certainly not the developers considered doing the decent thing by the people who had paid deposits for the houses or to the merchants who supplied the building materials. Local businesses and house buyers are still owed around 30 million by the developers.

The town mayor says that it's easy to criticise now but that, at the time, everyone was doing well out of the building boom and nobody was complaining then.

Local councils can re-classify former rural land as urban land. On reclassification citrus groves and farm fields become much more valuable as buildiing plots. In the boom years Fortuna town council found itself with nearly 10 million euros extra from the sale of reclassified land and the councillors set about spending the money with gusto. They expected more money to follow and they borrowed against future income. The result now, in the lean years, is that the council has had to jack up taxes and either cut services or charge more for them. Many projects were never completed but the bank loans on them still have to be paid off.

In small towns in Spain everyone knows everyone else. Little networks of friends and relations do favours for other little networks. The money coming in from the developers apparently flowed into lots of those networks. At the time of the local elections in 2003 with so much money swilling around the locals became much more interested in who was in charge whilst the politicians saw the potential in controlling all that lovely money. The ruling PP party set about buying votes. It wasn't until 2011 that the courts found party workers guilty of vote rigging. The mayor, the same man is still the mayor now as then, chose not to resign.

The people of Fortuna will be paying for las Lamparillas for years to come. Spain is paying for lots of similar projects the length and breadth of the country.

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Since writing this article a higher court has confirmed the charges of vote rigging in Fortuna and the Mayor, Matias Carrillo, has resigned. 

More elections

Regular readers (as if!) will remember that the Socialists, who currently control the National Government, got a drubbing in the recent local elections  - well with the exception of Pinoso where the Socialists wrested control of the Pinoso Town Council from a right of centre coalition.

Today the current President, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero announced that his Government will not complete its full term and that there will be General Elections on the 20th of November of this year. Zapatero won't be standing. The Socialist candidate is a bloke called Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. The chap likely to head up the next government is a Conservative called Mariano Rajoy.

One of my original plans when I first came to Spain was to get involved in local politics. I reckoned I'd join a party, do my bit of pamphleteering, meet a few people in the process and, with my perfect Spanish, soon get myself elected as a councillor. Something went wrong somewhere. I baulked at paying the membership subs because I was too poor, the Spanish didn't seem to be moving towards that level of perfection I'd anticipated and, when I finally plucked up the courage to go to a branch meeting, I was more or less turned away at the door.

Yesterday I filled in the forms online and finally joined the party. We'll see how it goes at the second attempt.

I don't think Zapatero was influenced at all by my joining. We EU Citizens are disenfranchised in Spain for the National Elections.

Well there's a surprise

Not the usual sort of entry. All over Spain the PSOE, the Labour Party equivalent, has been badly mauled. The political map of Spain has turned blue, the colour of the conservative PP.

But not in Pinoso, well not at the most local level anyway. The PSOE seems to have gone from 2 to 5 seats and the local UCL seems to have had a bad day. I say seems to because the national news media that I've checked for the results has some mistakes that I'm aware of and so I've had to do a bit of interpretation.

There were 5,299 potential voters in Pinoso of which 212 were not Spanish (a lot of those being Brits.) Turnout was just over 80% with 4.4% spoiled papers and 1.4% said that they were unhappy to vote for any of the candidates offered by handing in a blank vote.

Party	Councillors 2011	Votes 2011	Councillors 2007	Votes 2007
PSOE	5	1291	2	779
PP	3	1030	5	1355
PSD	2	691	1	507
UCL	2	689	4	1045
BLOC	1	477	1	354

Polling Stations

I'm not sure and I can't find the details on the Internet but I'm more or less certain that every polling station notice I've ever seen in the UK has had the same print style - a heavy sans serif font. When we went to vote in Pinoso this morning I don't think there was any sort of notice ouside the polling station.

We were only allowed to vote in the local, town hall, elections. We EU residents are disenfranchised at provincial level.

Voting day is Sunday, not Thursday as in the UK. Ahh, yes, that's why we voted today!

Spanish polling stations open from 9am to 8pm. In the UK I think normal hours are 7am to 10pm.

In Spanish elections it is necessary to produce photographic proof of identity. In our case that meant our passport.

In Spain the candidates stroll back and forth between the various polling stations saying hello to people. At the table where your eligibility to vote is checked and where you deposit your ballot there are three polling station staff. There are lots of other people sitting at adjoining tables. I understand they are party sympathisers scrutinizing a fair vote. I thought that this was different to the UK where I have never seen any party sympathisers inside the station. Apparently though  UK candidates and agents can visit polling stations too so long as they don't try to canvass.

In the UK the vote is for a named individual by making a mark on a voting slip. In Spain, where there is a proportional representation system, each party puts forward sufficient candidates to cover all of the seats available within the given constituency. Depending on the percentage of the vote the party captures a corresponding number of their candidates are elected. The top of the list first, the second next and so on. Voters do not mark the paper in any way they simply select the list for their chosen party, pop it inside an envelope and then put the envelope in the ballot box.

I'm not sure they would have let me take the picture in a UK polling station either. Then again I've never thought to ask.

Out and about yet again

The Socialist meeting today was held in the little park alongside the social centre in the Santa Catalina district of the town. The event started with elevenses followed by speeches from three of the candidates including their man for mayor who rejoices in the name of Lázaro. They were unlucky. The splendid weather of yesterday had gone and the day was grey, miserable and cold.

The audience was relatively small, bigger than the UCL yesterday evening but much smaller than the PP on Friday. The crowd was an enthusiastic bunch though - much more spontaneous applause than at either of the other two meetings. The message was quite different too and I heard some things that rang true to me but of which I had been unaware. The difference being, I suppose, that the Socialists have been in opposition for the last four years and are able to aportion blame for what they consider to be the errors of the last administration. Their proposals, like the proposals of the other two, sounded reasonable but I suppose they would.

No free gifts to speak of but at least they had their manifesto available.

Out and about again

Tonight on my personal election trail it was the UCL - Unión Centro Liberal - a party local to Pinoso with no national affiliation. This group have been courting the British vote for the last few years by offering an English Language Helpdesk

They must have been very disappointed with the turnout. Perhaps everyone was at home to see if Lucía Peréz would win Eurovision for Spain, but the local cultural centre conference room looked distinctly underpopulated. I don't think there were any Britons there apart from the chap who runs the helpdesk and the British candidate in their lists. Then again I know very few people so I could well be wrong.

I thought the political message was clear though and there was almost no sniping at the opposition which I rather approve of. On top of that they gave me free gifts - a notebook and a pen - not up to the standard of the gifts of four years ago but more useful than the plastic flags from last night. I've already seen an English translation of the main areas of their manifesto but it would have been nice if there had been a full copy available at the meeting.

Campaigning - Spanish style

The PSD website said that they would be in the social centre in Santa Catalina all day.

I wanted a copy of their electoral programme so we popped along, after lunch, to pick one up. There were a lot of people with the remains of lunch on the tables underneath the trees. As we wandered around the hall looking for a leaflet the man on the bar called over to ask if we wanted a beer. No leaflets though.

Free food, free beer. Nothing political. Campaigning, Spanish style.

Out and about

I've always enjoyed election time - getting out to hear the candidates, even the ones I wouldn't expect to vote for. I still remember being poked in the chest by Maggie Thatcher and fearing for my life as Willie Whitelaw's bodyguards reached inside their jackets perhaps thinking my long camera lens was something more sinister.

Yesterday evening  I went to hear what the local PP, the Conservative Party equivalent, had to say for themselves. Fortunately I was neither poked nor menaced.

The routine was pretty straightforward. Several of the prospective councillors stood up and explained what the PP intended to do in each of their areas be that education, health or employment. There was also a representative of the provincial PP to show central support for the candidates and to emphasise the broader reach of the PP campaign.

One of the candidates is an English woman. She's a long way down the list and, to be honest, has no chance of being elected but she has a symbolic significance to the expat British community. The UCL and BLOC, two of the other parties, also have someone in their list with the same  function and the PSD seems to have a meeting aimed at English speakers but no candidate.

The person who introduced her failed to mention that she would be speaking in English for the benefit of the non Spanish speakers. There was a general murmuring from the Spanish audience as she started but she did well; she ploughed on and explained the whole PP programme quickly and succinctly.

UCL tonight with a bit of luck and then the PSOE tomorrow morning.

I pinched the photos from Facebook. Can you see me in the one of the audience?

Election Fever

It's election time in Spain. On 22 May we have the local and regional elections. The campaign period proper started as Thursday became Friday this week. At a national level the current government is in the hands of the Socialists but their popularity is at rock bottom because of the present economic situation and the scandalously high unemployment figures.

The local councils are enormously important in Spain. In Pinoso there are 13 councillors elected through a proportional representation system. You vote not for a candidate but for a party. The party puts forward a list of candidates with the names at the top of the list being the first elected and so on. At a national level this means there are never surprise defeats for the big names. There is never the need for by elections either as if anyone drops away during their period of office there are always "spare" candidates waiting in the wings.

There are lots of quite small but influential political parties at a national level based on geography or historic nationality so the Catalans, the Navarrese, the Basques, Galicians and the Canarians all play an important role when either of the two largest parties, the Socialist Workers Party (more New Labour than the name suggests) or the Popular Party (read Conservatives) do not have a clear majority. In some areas the big parties campaign under a regional name. There are a couple of other national paries though they currently have fewer "MPs" than the regional parties.

In Pinoso the two big national parties are represented but the Socialists have just two councillors and the real race is between the national PP and a local group called UCL. The UCL recognised the possible importance of the British vote after the last elections and has had an Spanish speaking English chap working on its behalf as a sort of go between since that time. The PP also recruited a British woman to do something similar as the elections approached.

The PP, the Conservatives, won a narrow majority at the last elections over the local party UCL (Unión Centro Liberal) and after the elections those two parties formed a coalition. Apart from the Socialists mentioned above we also have present councillors and candidates from a breakaway socialist party (PSD or Social Democrats) and what I think is a part of a one time left leaning Valencian Nationalist party (BLOC)

I always enjoy election campaigns but it looks unlikely that I'll be able to get along to many of the rallies and meetings for one reason or another. Actually I'm a bit miffed that I won't be able to vote at the regional level. For some reason the EU legislation gives me local, national and European votes in Spain or in the UK but nothing at the regional level in either.

In our region, Valencia, the PP, the Conservative Partido Popular, has a clear majority but the current Valencian President and lots of his chums are embroiled in a political corruption scandal. So far the politicians have managed to keep out of court but the circumstantial evidence seems very strong. It would have been nice to be able to express my view through the ballot box. Interestingly in the two conversations that I've had today with other Britons about the elections their main concern has been about corruption too.