POLITICAL ROUND-UP

Election Countdown The commonest question heard this past week has been "how can I find out if I can vote and if so, where?" If you registered at your local Town Hall before the end of February (empadronamiento) you can vote. If you have not received any information as to where, go along to the Town Hall this week - and even on election day itself - and ask them to check the list. If you should be on it but aren't, ask to be put on it which - by law - should be done immediately. You will then be told which polling station you have to go to. If there are any problems, go to the office of the political party you intend to vote for and they will only be too glad to get you on the list! Despite what some of the parties think, there doesn't seem to be any organised conspiracy to keep foreigners from voting. In the vast majority of cases, any omissions are due to sheer bureaucratic inefficiency. Two tips: take a copy of your empadronamiento with you and don't leave your visit to the Town Hall until election day. Election predictions Local and national polls indicate that the party currently in power in most of the big towns and cities will be re-elected so it looks as if the key to change is to be found in the smaller towns. Most local political observers seem to agree that the solution to local problems is to vote for the opposition on the premise that if a party is in power for only four years it won't have time to get too corrupt. It will also put pressure on the party to be seen to be doing something for local inhabitants if it wants to be re-elected. No doubt council officials who want to will still find a way to line their pockets but they will have less time to do so. While "corruption at the Town Hall" seems to be the big issue these days, according to the National Statistics Institute, the newspapers are more preoccupied by it than the average man or woman in the street. While most people go around shaking their heads at the brazenness of it, they're more worried about immigration, the housing situation, terrorism, or unemployment. Unfortunately, people everywhere - and not just in Spain - tend to shrug their shoulders and adopt the attitude: "Well, what else can you expect from them. They're politicians, aren't they." However, they are the people who are allowing the developers to go on building urbanisations in areas where the water supply is already a problem. These houses are built with foreign buyers in mind, even though all the figures indicate that because of a myriad of property-related problems, many foreigners are thinking twice before buying in Spain. They are also building golf courses when the figures once again show that foreign golfers now find Spain too expensive and are heading elsewhere, like neighbouring Portugal. Most of the small, new local parties, the Greens and Izquierda Unida (United Left, IU) are promising to rein in the developers and limit urban growth to the council's ability to provide basic services, so perhaps it's worth giving these parties a chance to prove they're not spouting a lot of hot air. This column has been sympathetic to the IU because of its anti-corruption stance but it blotted its copy book last week when its general secretary Gaspar Llamazares announced that the party's ultimate aim was "to create a network of IU local councils that will promote the Third Republic." The IU is basically made up of what could be called the losers of the Civil War - communists, anarchists and the more radical trade unionists - who don't seem to have realised that Spain has had a monarchy for hundreds of years, but only two Republic. The first one lasted less than two years (February 1873-December 1874). The second lasted less than six (April 1931 to July 1936) and the ideological squabbling and internal divisions led to one of the bloodiest episodes in the country's history. The IU has always talked about holding a referendum on the monarchy, which according to polls is accepted by three quarters of all Spaniards, while another 10% or so are indifferent. However, "serious" left-wingers (as opposed to the armchair variety) yearn for another Republic - when they would no doubt squabble and split into hundreds of factions until the military decide to put an end to it - a tragedy that has happened too often in Spain's history. The alternative Perhaps the time has come to give the new parties a chance. Most of them are very local issue-oriented, content to leave the bigger issues such as the abolition of the monarchy to Parliament. The Green Party, based in Fuengirola, is such a one and has nothing to do with the IU, although the latter in some areas is calling itself the IU-Green Party. Most towns, like Coín, will have a party calling itself the Alternative or the Citizens' party, whose manifestos concentrate on water supply, and improving everything from roads to health care. These parties are not to be sneered at. They've seen how their towns have been changed beyond recognition - and not for the better - by the so-called developers, usually in cahoots with the party in power, and seem determined to do something about it - if they get voted in. So please do your bit next Sunday and vote for the party most likely to do its best for your local community.