Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18871038/
Foreigners battle in Spain’s town halls
By Leslie Crawford
Updated: 1:11 a.m. ET May 26, 2007
For years European expatriates living in Spain have suffered the effects of municipal corruption. On Sunday they have a chance to fight back as an unprecedented number of European Union citizens have registered to vote in local elections in a drive to oust the corrupt town hall officials who have profited handsomely from Spain’s extended property boom.
A record 318,517 foreigners living in Spain have signed up to make use of the right of EU citizens to vote in municipal elections wherever they live. Although they represent only a fraction of the estimated 2m Europeans who live in Spain, their votes could make a big difference in small towns and villages along the Mediterranean coast, where foreigners sometimes outnumber Spanish residents.
There is also a record number of Europeans standing as candidates. “This is political integration where it really matters, in the town hall, where people pay their taxes,” says Kate Mentink, a Scottish councillor in the town of Calvia, on the island of Mallorca. She is standing for re-election with the conservative Popular party.
In the last municipal elections four years ago, only four EU citizens stood in the Balearic Islands. This year, there are 40. Ms Mentink believes the elections are drawing local and foreign communities together. “We may have different nationalities but we all need the same things: security, clean streets, good services.”
Nationally, Sunday’s vote is a test for both Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain’s Socialist prime minister, and his opponent Mariano Rajoy, Popular party leader. Both have invested significant political capital in the elections, which both see as a dry-run for general elections next year.
At local level the key issue for Spanish and foreign-born voters alike is municipal ?corruption.
Town councils have grown immensely rich by selling municipal land to property developers and by reclassifying sites for development. Building plots command huge premiums and corrupt officials have charged handsomely for the “favour” of reclassifying land. Backhanders have also become the norm for obtaining building permits. In the process, town halls have run roughshod over the rights of existing property owners, often expropriating land to make way for big residential developments or tourist resorts.
Towns such as Marbella on the mainland have been blighted by corruption scandals. Judges are prosecuting a few cases but only a handful of officials have been jailed. In the run-up to the elections, new corruption scandals, almost all linked to property deals, have surfaced daily.
Jacqui Cotterill, a Briton who is standing for election in Parcent, a small town in the province of Alicante, says: “There are two big issues here: the overbuilding and the lack of democracy in local government. The mayor wants to treble the size of our village by ?building 1,800 new homes in our mountains. We are fed up with the lack of consultation.”
Lisa Svoboda, a retired diplomat who holds dual Canadian and Swedish citizenship, also became deeply involved in local politics when she began fighting Valencia’s urban development laws, which allow the expropriation of private property for redevelopment.
After years of campaigning against the unfettered expansion of Benissa, an inland town in the province of Alicante, she has decided to take her battle inside the town hall. Mrs Svoboda is standing for town council with a coalition of citizens groups. In Benissa, a town of 12,000 people, a third of the population are foreign-born. “Foreigners have to be part of the solution,” she says. “We have a contribution to make. We can work together.”
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