Carles Escolà
Barcelona (EFE) This is the question of the last popular consultation approved by the Government, which has authorized 77 in 45 years of democracy, from painting blue the houses of the ‘Smurf town’ of Júzcar (Málaga) to the merger of the municipalities of Villanueva de la Serena and Don Benito (Extremadura).
Spain is not an international reference in participatory culture like Switzerland, Italy or Brazil. And it is that, according to the latest data provided to EFE by the Ministry of Territorial Policy, only 37% of the 200 popular consultations requested in 45 years of democracy among the 8,131 municipalities in Spain have been authorized, so that 45 .5% were rejected (85) and 17.5% (38) withdrawn, archived or are in process.
And that is so regardless of the political color of the government on duty. That is the conclusion reached by José Manuel Ruano, professor of Political Science at the Complutense University of Madrid, who has compiled the most complete data available to date through the transparency portal.
Ruano attributes the high number of rejections to “a very restrictive way of understanding municipal competence” by the Government, which in the vast majority of cases argues that the referendum “does not deal with a matter of municipal competence nor is it of a local nature”. .
From the Arbúcies bridge to the Alcoy festival
Undoubtedly, the most unique popular consultation was carried out by the Malaga town of Júzcar in December 2017, when the residents decided to keep their houses blue, after being the setting for the promotion of the Sony Pictures film “The Smurfs in 3D”.
The current mayor of what is known as ‘Smurf town’, Francisco Lozano, has assured EFE that close to 90% of the houses have already been painted blue since the residents decided so, “and those that remain will be finished in the summers , when people can”. “There is a house that nevertheless refuses to paint it, but I believe that it must be respected,” adds the mayor.
But the first popular consultation held in Spain was carried out in April 1985 by a town in Girona, Arbúcies, which summoned its 4,000 residents a month after the referendum on NATO, taking advantage of the then recently approved Law Regulating the Bases of the Local Regime.
1,101 people voted and there was an abstention of 67%, but even today the expansion of the municipal bridge endures. A young journalist named Carles Puigdemont covered this query for the newspaper El Punt. Over the years and already as president, he was the leader of the illegal consultation on the independence of Catalonia.
The following year it was Armagasilla de Alba, a town in Ciudad Real that submitted to the will of its neighbors in Ruidera issues related to the regulations governing the management of this nucleus of the municipality. These non-binding consultations, in addition to the government’s placet, must be ratified by the plenary sessions.
The Basque Country, leader in consultations
In 1986 the Gipuzkoan town of Hiruerrieta held an authorized consultation, in what was the first case of self-dissolution of a municipality via referendum, in its case for the constitution of three: Icazteguieta, Orendáin and Baliarrain. More recently, in March 2022, the vote of 1,877 people allowed the nucleus of Usansolo to become independent from the Biscayan town of Galdakao.
The Basque Country is the leading community in holding popular consultations in Spain, since 14 of its municipalities have summoned their neighbors to give their opinion on these issues and others, such as the future of the Cider Museum in Astigarraga, whether or not to put underground containers in Lasarte and on the waste collection system.
Euskadi is followed by the Valencian Community, with 12 popular consultations authorized by the Council of Ministers, Andalusia (9), Castilla y La Mancha (7), Catalonia and Extremadura (6). Melilla has never asked to hold a referendum and Ceuta, Murcia and Asturias have seen the few that have requested rejected.
Andalusia and Castilla La Mancha, which are denied the most
The ranking of “unauthorized” queries is led by Andalusia and Castilla y La Mancha, whose municipalities have seen their requests denied up to 13 times, respectively. The Valencian Community did not achieve the placet on 11 occasions and Catalonia on 10.
“The vast majority of requests that have been rejected have to do with inquiries about infrastructure, railway lines, high voltage lines, prison locations, roads and issues that the Government understands exceed local powers,” says Professor Ruano, who recalls that neither can be consulted on the local treasury.
As examples, the failed consultation of 1990 in Seville on the metropolitan railway or that of Tarifa (Cádiz) on the electrical interconnection with Morocco through the municipality (1996).
The last request for consultation that the Council of Ministers has rejected comes from Andalusia, specifically from La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz) and its claim to call a referendum to raise a petition for the conversion of the municipality into autonomy.
Participatory budgets, escape valve
According to a professor from the Department of Constitutional Law and Political Science at the University of Barcelona, José Luis Martínez-Alonso, the “rigorism” of the regulations for holding popular referendums has an escape valve in the law itself, which allows consultations on very specific issues. in the districts without going through the Council of Ministers.
There is no census on this type of neighborhood consultation, implemented in cities like Madrid by Manuela Carmena or in Barcelona, where the Socialists called in 2010 the famous consultation on Avenida Diagonal, which ended up costing deputy mayor Carles Martí his job.
The now mayoress of the Catalan capital, Ada Colau, has deepened this path of participation through the so-called participatory budgets, with 30 million euros available to residents.
40,000 people have participated, according to the consistory, to select 76 neighborhood performances in the city. As an example, the construction of a cricket field, a proposal promoted by a women’s team of a very popular sport among the Pakistani and Indian community. With an investment of 1.6 million euros, the cricket field will be a reality in the coming months.