Surveys say that town councils are the institution in which we feel best represented. Does the following request represent it? “I would ask the councilors to allow us an area to park on full days. I came three quarters of an hour earlier and had to do three laps and I also parked relatively far away”. Juan Chacón is one of the three PSOE councilors in La Línea de la Concepción, and who has been dismissed as the socialist group’s spokesman for “the unforgivable incident”.
The socialist councilor does not have an angel Marcelo, like Jorge Fernández Díaz, to help him park, so his mayor offered him a homemade solution. “It has a parking lot for €2.80 next to the town hall, the 50 or 70 euros (actually it’s 75) that they pay in per diems for the plenums is for them to use for petrol, parking or to buy a pie if they have he eats Or you come walking. He can go out like Miguelete, in the morning.” The networks have campaigned for the mayor. More than a million reproductions on Tik Tok, half a million on Twitter… “Diets and hang-ups”, sums up one tweeter.
Juan Franco governs La Línea with one of the loosest absolute majorities in Spain, 21 of the 25 councillors, thanks to the 67% of the votes he got with La Línea 100×100. He has his own Funko Pop and is displayed on the networks next to the iron throne in the pose of the king of the seven kingdoms. His is small. It has 20 km2, 63,000 inhabitants and 30,000 cars looking for parking.
There is no news of tactical urban planning in a city with 19 car parks (no cinema, one library…) and roundabouts famous for queues when there is control at the Gibraltar gate. The mayor stumbles with his plan to turn the Line into an autonomous city, like Ceuta or Melilla; and he is unable to reduce the 40% unemployment rate… A geek – or not – but skilled enough to spend the wild card of exemplarity and remove the colors from his unfortunate socialist opponent.
For a parking space or a golden pension, politicians become numb to growing the rift with the electorate. In Catalonia, deputies have been unable for years to agree on a formula for their salaries to be taxed in full, paid leave has fossilized among Parliament staff and it took 20 years to realize that decades-long mandates – like the of Jordi Pujol – they will not return and the remunerations and pensions of former presidents of the Chamber and the Generalitat are accumulating. The public service forces a financial striptease exercise in the name of transparency. Having overcome this trance, politicians must be aware that they also enjoy benefits. During the exercise of the position and after.