On rural depopulation - If old people are all that's left, become an old people's home?

From El Pais about Pescueza, a Spanish village in the Extremadura:

The premise behind the project is to provide support for elderly people, without requiring them to give up their homes. The program has been running since 2011, and is funded by the Friends of Pescueza Association, the Democratic Pensions Union (UDP) and the regional government of Extremadura, according to the regional newspaper Hoy.

“There are seniors here. We have to take advantage of that,” explains Vicente. “When a grandparent closes the door to their home to go to a nursing home, all of their memories are left behind. We created a village care center, where their very own houses and streets are adapted for their needs.”

A creative approach to the problem of having two-thirds of your (declining) population over the age of 60. On a more general point, some of the ideas - having a local focus to care at home, providing technology support to people and adapting the environment not just the home - are worth thinking about wherever we're looking to improve care and support for the elderly and disabled in a community (without the fall back of putting them in a home).

Like rural areas everywhere across Europe, Spain's remoter places have depopulated leaving behind the old and the poor:

Aguilar de Anguita, a small community in Guadalajara province, around 140 kilometers northeast of Madrid. The village is just six kilometers from the main Madrid-Barcelona highway, but Ángel Álvarez Gago, his wife, and their two daughters, who run Casa Juan, a roadside restaurant, are among the last remaining inhabitants. The streets are clean and its houses well maintained, but the place is silent and empty. Take the road out of the village at night in the direction of Valencia, and for the next 50 kilometers until Molina de Aragón, the villages are all empty; the only light comes from street lamps.

Cities have devoured rural communities as younger generations seek out a better life (or at least a richer life) leaving behind this emptiness. For those of us passing through it all seems strange- many of the villages have all the old world charm we associate with rural life but, in the end, these places are too remote, too lacking in amenities and too full of old people. Maybe making them into old folks' homes isn't such a bad idea after all?

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Can we build family homes not factory farms for hipsters?

You'll hear it from time to time - "London is the least densely populated mega-city", "we could build higher and more denses to solve the housing crisis". I've a problem with this argument and it doesn't matter whether it comes from the anti-development CPRE or the trendily pro-development London YIMBYs, because it doesn't reflect what people want. And, while we can all have a laugh about the things local councillors say at planning meetings (certainly the twitterati had a field day here) but these guys in Leeds have a point:

“This is a very dense development.

“I look at that and think there is no public or amenity site on the development.

“There are odd days in the year where it’s nice, warm and sunny, and there is nowhere in this development for people to go outside and sit.

“It seems like you are trying to cram a lot onto this site with very little amenity space. If you had children you wouldn’t want to live here, because there is no space for them at all.

“I really don’t like this (application), and the more I think about it, the less I like it."

This is a proposal for 242 tiny flats that are said to have "co-living space" making it all fine, I guess. The problem is that Cllr Colin Campbell, who words are above, is spot on. Providing a laundry room and free (or 'included in the service charge' sort of free) wi-fi doesn't fit the bill. There are a lot of reasons why dense, high-rise developments of this sort are anti-family but they are also sub-optimal for any long-residency.

Spain famously has some of the most population dense cities in Europe - living in flats and apartments is normal for much of the population and generations of Spaniards were brought up in these sorts of places. But there's something important Spain gets right that we are failing to do - people need an outside. Not a tiny little balcony you can squeeze two tiny chairs onto if you jiggle them nor just access to some sort of communal garden or open space but a decent-sized outside where you can do something - from sitting and lounging to having a long lesurely dinner with the family.

"What about the weather" will come the obvious reply and, it's true, Spain does enjoy more sunshine and less rain than Leeds. But is it really beyond the wit of architects and designers to create places that have an outside - a roof garden, a terrace, an atrium - while providing for everything the British weather can throw at them? Whether it's the glass curtains that so many Spanish flats acquire or awnings, or part-covered spaces there is a way to give people the outside they want, a personal space where there's fresh air (or not so fresh in the case of some city centres), a view and the chance on a good day of some sunshine.

For densification to work in our cities it has to provide the things that people want from a family home. And a private outdoor space is one of those things (as are dining space, living space, good storage and car parking) yet we're building thousands of flats that fail to meet this requirement simply because the designers think outdoors is a luxury not an essential part of a home. So, for all that I'll grant developers the right to build soul-less and depressing bunny-hutches, it's time we recognised that this simply isn't meeting demand at any level beyond "have I got a roof over my head". At their best these high rise developments are factory farms for hipsters while their worst is as a sort of holding pen for society's flotsum and jetsum. It's family homes we need and what people want, perhaps we should build them instead?

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Paint, tiles, flower pots and park benches - lessons from Estepona's regeneration

I've always been a little doubtful about the "let's be like Barcelona" school of urban regeneration. This leads to enthusiastic proclamations about how Bradford will be the "Shoreditch of the North", as if this is somehow either achievable (Bradford's not two stops on the tube from the City of London, for a start) or desirable (why would we want a child free and expensive city filled with achingly trendy beards). I do think, however, that we can look at what other places have done successfully - even Shoreditch - and ask if some of what they've done can help make our place a better place.

We've been visiting Estepona on Spain's Costa del Sol off and on for over a decade. And during that time, we watched the building explosion of the 2000s, fevered speculation about high speed railways and more recent twitchiness about Brexit, at least among ex-pat residents. Oh, and most of the local council went to jail:

The socialist mayor of Estepona, Antonio Barrientes, and ten other council officials have been arrested on corruption charges related to property development fraud.

It has dragged on a little too:

Since 2006 a judge has been diligently carrying out an investigation before bringing the case to trial. Some 113 witnesses have been interviewed, 26 police reports written, 800 volumes of documents have been collated and the final report ahead of the trial is 226 pages long. Of those questioned, 94 are still formally under investigation. The inquiry has taken so long that three people being investigated have died.

In and amongst all of this Estepona has slowly transformed as a place, mostly through old-fashioned place-making - public and private - and a realisation that today's Costa visitor is less interested in the flash night life of Puerto Banus (now a decidedly Russian affair albeit with the same number of Ferraris, Aston Martins and Lambos as ever) and wants a quieter, more-measured place to enjoy. We are, after all, ten years older, a little greyer and just a tad slower than we were when we first visited.

The result is a really lovely town where residents, businesses and the council (helped by a few dollops of EU cash) work together to keep it looking good:



The streets of the old town - like the one above feature coloured pots filled with geraniums. Every night in summer council workers water these pots - a pretty big commitment but it makes for a fantastic display:



What this investment - over about ten years - has done is encourage residents to add their own pots and plants to the show:



Each street has it's own colour schemes - red in one, yellow the next, one street has yellow with pink polka dots - and it melds into some brilliant public squares:



This square not only features a lovely stone elephant (alongside a lovely restaurant Casa Dona Jeronima) but some brilliant features and details:






The most recent public space - once a tatty square where the buses used to stop - not only has an underground car park (what a good use of the space) but more great planing as some lovely murals:





Most of the town is pedestrianised (or with access limited to residents) and has been gradually improved with the same palette of colours and materials mixing with creative tiling and mosaics to make a pleasant place for an evening stroll. The whole town centre has the feeling of a park albeit one where people live, where businesses are run and where visitors enjoy beer or tapas (often both). And on the back of this better public space, you get the refurbishment of great old buildings:







The result of this (and I've no doubt that thousands of Northern European visitors - semi-resident in many cases - is a factor in the town's success) is that the old chiringuitos are sharpening up their act to serve this affluent audience and not lose them all to traditional street cafes and restaurants in the town:



There's also investment in the beachfront (Estepona has an artificial beach but beyond the town itself the beaches are smaller and rockier) like this boardwalk:



To return to where I started, this isn't an argument for other places to do the same - that doesn't work. Rather it's for us to think how these relatively simple investments in the street scene, in features and details, and in soft elements such as plants or flowers make a place so much more effective. When I argue for us to treat city and town centres like parks rather than as CBDs or "economic drivers", it's this sort of work I'm talking about. Andalucia isn't a rich place (per capita income is lower than for Bradford) but this town has, having escaped from the mania and corruption of Spain's housing boom, focused its efforts on making what it has work well.

Of course, Bradford isn't the Costa del Sol any more than it's Shoreditch but I do think the lesson here is to step back from those voices telling us it's all about some sort of competitive race between different cities for investment, business attention and development. Perhaps we should think more about paint, flower pots and park benches than about whether one or other bunch of sharp-suited developers are going to arrive in town to build.

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Stuff to read: Driverless buses and trucks, night parks, stupid planning rules and Tokyo's housing

Driverless buses in Finland:

Residents of Helsinki, Finland will soon be used to the sight of buses with no drivers roaming the city streets. One of the world's first autonomous bus pilot programs has begun in the Hernesaari district, and will run through mid-September. 

Finnish law does not require vehicles on the road to have a driver, making it the perfect place to get permission to test the Easymile EZ-10 electric mini-buses.

The buses look cute too:



And self-driving trucks are on the way too:

By joining forces with Uber we can fast forward to the future. Together, Otto and Uber can build the backbone of the rapidly-approaching self-driving freight system. We can help make transportation as reliable as running water, everywhere for everyone, whether you’re talking people or packages.

All web-enabled too:

Veniam, a startup coming out of the University of Porto with offices in Silicon Valley and Singapore (besides its homebase in Portugal), turns moving vehicles such as cars and buses into live networks that allow people to be online without being dependent on a cellular network. The platform is also capable of using the data it collects to keep track and better manage traffic flows and alternate routes. Veniam’s technology was launched 18 months ago in Porto, where its hardware has been installed onto the public transport system. The company claims that about 73% of the city’s bus riders are using Veniam’s free Wi-Fi. The next market for the company this year is Singapore.

And yet again Singapore is at the forefront.

Anyway. Should parks be open at night?

A couple weeks ago, it was a beautiful summer evening in Milwaukee and some friends and I decided to meet up at our favorite park to toss our light-up frisbee. It was about 9:30pm when we finally gathered, so we spent the next couple hours tossing the disc. We also spent the next couple hours keeping a constant eye out for the police. This is because all the parks in our area “close” at 10pm and it is technically illegal to be in this public space at night.

Singapore embraces new technology the disruption of existing market models - Spain on the other hand:

A month ago, Barcelona City Hall introduced a €1.3 million raft of measures to crack down on owners letting out apartments using sites like Airbnb, but without a license. The authorities set up a website and called on residents to report apartments being rented out illegally. So far, some 500 complaints have been made.

And you wondered why Europe was falling behind?

Mind you it's not just Europe with daft planning rules - here's New Zealand:

Just look at the mess in Auckland where a developer wanting to build housing for 1500 households in an old gravel pit at Three Kings, turning much of it into parks and open spaces, has bought almost a decade’s worth of objections and processes and hearings. How can anybody build anything to scale under those conditions? In the middle of a housing crisis, with daily news stories about the number of children having to live in cars with their parents because there are not enough houses to go round, NIMBY activists block new construction.

This consultation has been going on for eight years - helps explain why Auckland is one of the world's least affordable cities.

It doesn't have to be that way - here's Tokyo as an example:

As FT’s Tokyo bureau chief Robin Harding wrote in the article, the city had 142,417 housing starts in 2014, which was “more than the 83,657 housing permits issued in the state of California (population 38.7m), or the 137,010 houses started in the entire country of England (population 54.3m).” Compare this, also, with the roughly 20,000 new residential units approved annually in New York City, the 23,500 units started in Los Angeles County, and the measly 5,000 homes constructed in 2015 throughout the entire Bay Area.

And this is in a city with no empty land. This is what laissez faire planning policies get you. Take note London.

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Friday Fungus: It had to happen! Welcome to mushroom chocolate!

I am grateful to Julia for bringing this to my attention:

Our aim has always been to develop high quality medicinal mushroom products that improve your health and wellbeing. Not only that, but we want to make it a tasty experience too. That's why our chocolates are the perfect excuse to enjoy raw chocolate whilst getting all the healing benefits of mushrooms. 

The full chocolate range - seven flavours is available at Harrods. Where else!

The firm in question is Hifas da Terra who are a splendidly batty (but super-scientific) Spanish company:

The Hifas da Terra project comes from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC ) where Catalina Fernández de Ana Portela, biologist and founder of the company, began to develop an initiative to grow saprophytic fungi on wood logs. After several years of business coaching and scientific studies at the forestry reasearch center ”Lourizán”, Hifas da Terra was created in 1999. A biotechnology company focused on mycology, trying to bring the knowledge of the beneficial properties of mushrooms to the people.

The firm retails mushroom kits, creams, soaps and health spa treatments, assorted gourmet products (including mushrooms in honey - not to be confused with honey mushrooms), food supplements and gifts, including a range of stylish clutch bags:

Brilliant!

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On the radicalisation of youth...

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I look back to this:

Between 1936 and 1939 over 35,000 men and women, from over 50 countries, left their homes to volunteer for the Republican forces. More than 2,300 of these came from Britain, Ireland and the commonwealth, of whom over 500 were killed (see below). Perhaps 80% were members of the Communist Party, or the Young Communist League, though volunteers with an alternative political background or who were active in the trade union movement were also accepted. 

Young men inspired by a passionate belief left their homes and families to go and fight a civil war in another country. They were fighting for a cause they saw as liberating - the fight against fascism was the justification given by Jack Jones but remember that the liberation these men were fighting for wasn't the liberation of western democracy but the liberation of Stalinist communism.

So tell me dear reader what the difference is between Jack Jones, Laurie Lee and Ernest Hemingway and those young men from Birmingham, Bradford or Slough fighting for was they believe in Syria and Iraq? Except that we won't be erecting monuments to their memory in the squares of Glasgow, Reading or San Francisco.

I don't think the young men of today heading to the middle east to fight are right. But then I don't think those who went to Spain hoping to impose Stalinist oppression there were right either.

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A different kind of housing crisis...

There are some 3.4 million empty homes in Spain, the consequence of the construction boom and subsequent economic crash. Nearly one-in-five homes in Andalucia are empty reflecting the scale of Spain's crisis - not just that the Spanish economy crashed but that the buyers, a fifth of who were ex-pats, simply vanished.

The result of this is that property is pretty cheap in Spain - prices have fallen:

Andalucian properties are going at 73% of their 2007 value and the Comunidad Valenciana is seeing houses sell for 68% of 2007 prices; the third and eighth highest on the list, respectively.

Not so Cataluña. Prices have dropped to 55% of their 2007 level for the Catalans, despite that overall reduction in the number of empty properties.

Any bets that some of those pension pots newly liberated by the UK government will end up buying these homes?

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Funny what you read in the Spanish papers!

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The Lib Dems are proposing an MP (or MPs given the number of Brits there) for the Costa del Sol:

The Liberal Democrats will fight to introduce a Costa del Sol MP after agreeing on a policy for overseas constituencies at their spring party conference.

An interesting idea but it seems a little odd to me. Right now ex-pats retain voting rights (at either a registered address or in the constituency where they last resided) for 15 years after departing these shores.

Now I've a bit of a problem with this idea.  Someone who departs for good to some other land (and, in the case of Spain at least) will get all those democratic rights in the new place - why should they retain them in the place they moved from? Were I to depart from Cullingworth for, let's say, Billericay, I wouldn't expect to retain the right to vote in Bradford's elections when I get the wonderful opportunity to elect people to Basildon District and Essex County!

Why do this for folk living in Benahavis who will either retain their registration in the UK or else will get the chance to elect people to the Benahavis council, the Andalucia region and the Madrid parliament?

Perhaps the Lib Dems think these ex-pats will vote for them? They are in for a cruel shock I think!

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How academic public health deceives us...

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But the most significant aspect of this story is that the paper is reporting a conclusion based on data which demonstrate the opposite. The paper reports that heart attacks declined after the smoking ban, but the data show that heart attacks did not decline after the smoking ban.

Yes folks, that our public health folk - the facts don't fit what you want? Just ignore them!

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Ah, that high speed rail thing again...

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...and how it's impact will not be what we're told:

If building great roads and trains were the route to lasting prosperity, Greece and Spain would be booming. The past 30 years have seen a huge splurge in infrastructure spending, often funded by the EU. The Athens metro is excellent. The AVE fast-trains in Spain are a marvel. But this kind of spending has done very little to change the fundamental problems that now plague both Greece and Spain – in particular, youth unemployment.

Worse, in some ways, EU funding for infrastructure has created problems. In Greece, milking the EU for subsidies became an industry in itself: and political connections were a surer route to wealth than entrepreneurial flair.

Doesn't look that promising, eh?

They'll need a lot of boats!

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Apparently contingency plans for evacuating Brits from Spain are being drawn up:

Ships, planes and coaches could be sent to bring home Britons who find themselves unable to withdraw money to pay for basic needs or travel home because of a Spanish or Portuguese banking crisis, while diplomats scramble to get special treatment for ex-pats from local banks.

According to The Sunday Times, the Foreign Office and the Treasury have both been drawing up contingency plans after credit rating agency Standard & Poor's last week downgraded the status of ten Spanish banks.

Do they realise just how many British residents there are in Spain & Portugal:

There are also a significant number of British (359,076 as of 2011, but more than one million are estimated to live permanently in Spain) and German (195,842) citizens, mainly in Alicante, Málaga provinces, Balearic Islands and Canary Islands. 

You'll need a lot of boats and planes!

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Let's hope the lad's value holds up....

In what must be one of the more bizarre twists in the story of the banking crisis Christiano Ronaldo is being used as collateral. Or so Süddeutsche Zeitung reports:

The daily reports that the Bankia group of savings banks, which financed Real Madrid’s acquisition of the Portuguese player, is now seeking to borrow funds from the European Central Bank. In response to the ECB’s demand for guarantees, Bankio are putting up… Ronaldo and the Brazilian Kaka, who also plays for the Madrid football club. In 2009, Real borrowed 76.5 million euros to pay transfer fees of 100 millions euros to Manchester United, and 60 million to Milan AC.

Which (and those who make comparisons between Manchester United's financial position and that of the two big Spanish clubs should note this) is a pretty sound bet since:

Bankia would first have to become insolvent. Thereafter, Real would have to default on its loans, which are secured by advertising and television revenues. It goes without saying that Real Madrid is in debt to the tune of several million euros. However, in Spain football clubs have a history of obtaining publicly funded bailouts — just like the country’s banks.”

Real Madrid are, just like those big banks, 'too big to fail' so Ronnie's as safe an asset as you can get (so long as he keeps playing).

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Jimena de la Frontera - thoughts on ruins, heritage and the price of historical interpretation

At Jimena de la Frontera in Andalucia there is a ruined Moorish castle above the town. You can see the castle from a fair way off (I suppose that's why they built it there) but to actually reach it you have to go up through the old town, up steep winding streets lined with white-fronted houses. The streets are very narrow - so narrow that the trip down is not for the faint-hearted or the owner of anything bigger than the Citroen we were driving. And, so typically of Andalucian hill villages, every second front step was occupied by an elderly man, woman or some small children.

There are no signs to the castle. One supposes that this is because anyone local knows where it is - at the top of the village - so directions would be a waste of space. Which problem provides our first clue about the attitude to heritage here. Back home there would be brown signs containing the appropriate castle symbol, there would be an expectation that visitors would arrive and want to visit the castle.

Anyway, we wound our way to the castle. You know you've arrived because there's no more road and a tatty little car park in which we found one of those international groups that bring a smile - a chatty Spanish chap with some very fine photography equipment and an elderly Austrian lady (who was really a local as she lived in the village and had done for a lot of years). A brief chat with this pair revealed that they were - I wasn't quite clear why - showing a young Irish couple around.

Now imagine what such a location would be like in England. There would be a barrier or gate, a little visitor centre and shop. And, of course, a charge of £4 or £5 just to go in and look at the ruins (you would be able to pay extra for a little guide book that explains the history). You get none of this in Spain.  No visitor centre, no shop and no charge. We simply have to walk up through the old Moorish gateway.

At some point in the past the local council had put up a series of "interpretative" notices. Over the years these had become rather tatty and, in some cases, difficult to read and where still legible really didn't assist much in understanding who had built the castle and how it became a ruin. It seems that Jimena has been there a long time though:

This gem of a village, has a fairly checkered historical past, having been inhabited at various times by the Iberians, Phoenicians and Carthaginians as well as by the Romans, who made good use of the rich metal deposits found there. Around the year 750, it was of great commercial importance to the Moors, who also used it as a strategic military point. Over the centuries Jimena was conquered and re-conquered on many occasions and twice fell into the hands of the Christians, but by in 1879, during the reign of Alfonso XII, Jimena was so highly considered that it was given the title of Cuidad (Town). With a present population of just over 9,000 inhabitants (some 1,000 of whom are foreign residents - many British), its narrow cobbled streets and white washed Andalusian houses, it certainly retains its village ambience and is a delight to visit.

Whatever the history, the ruins are just that - untidy, unkempt, uninterpreted by the mavens of plastic history. You can wander round at liberty, there aren't any don't go there, don't do that signs. There are no rails, no barriers - just the ruins of a Moorish castle with kites, kestrels and vultures in the skies and the most spectacular view.

It seems to me that, in our desire to inform, to educate, to manage our heritage, we have lost a little of the magic of looking at the ruins of what once was great. Rather than staring at the old tower, looking up through a hole broken in the ceiling. Rather than allowing the visitor's mind to wander, their spirit to soar in personal reflection and speculation, we force that visitor's eyes down to the approved, official interpretation of the heritage. Visiting an "interpreted" castle we come away better informed but less inspired than is the case with the uninterpreted place like this castle at Jimena.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't cherish our heritage but this needn't mean turning it into an "attraction" resplendent with a visitor centre, shop and cafe. Leaving it stark, allowing us to draw our own lessons, get our own undirected pleasure from the visit, might be as good, if not better. Maybe Jimena's apparent lack of care relates to past poverty rather that present decisions - indeed the big board by the castle bedecked with EU symbols suggests that the dead hand of officialdom is creeping closer. For once, I hope that the usual path of European funding in Southern Europe applies and it vanishes into the dusty hills rather than into shiny attraction management at this lovely little castle.

It was a delight to visit this castle, to wander its walls, to poke my head into the tower, to look out at the view - the reason the castle was built here I'm sure - and to ponder on how different is was a thousand years ago when the Moors were running Andalucia. Whether the cork woods were still the same, if the fields were filled with horses and fine cows - plus the great bulls destined for the blood and passion of the ring - and what the economic importance might have been? Above all it was a delight to look out and soak up the spirit of the place.

Maybe it will stay that way?

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The language of politics

For many years some of my colleagues have looked askance, mumbled into their beards and mutters about it "just not being right". I mean they come over here from god knows where, bring all their funny habits and strange food and clutter up the place with their unenglish bright colours. The least they can do is learn the language - and not expect us to produce everything in their own outlandish script.

But politics is practical - after all despite the habits, the food and an incomprehensible language these people have votes. So we have (accompanied by mutterings and mumblings) produced literature in "community languages" and tried to take a speaker of said language with us while campaigning. Whatever we might say about people learning English, we make this necessary compromise so as to ensure that our vital and vibrant political message reaches the eyes and ears of the whole electorate.

And, it seems that the same goes in Spain. The poster above is from Benahavis which is a small town just inland from Marbella famous for its restaurants and for an extraordinary number of golf courses. And Senor Guerrero has spotted that quite a lot of the town's population (even more in the Summertime) is British - moreover a growing proportion of those Brits are permanent residents and likely to vote. So our politician addresses them in English ignoring any sensitivities about campaigning in a foreign language.

The recent local elections in Spain saw - for perhaps the first time - a concerted effort by the main parties to reach the ex-pat communities and especially the Brits. As one local blogger writes:

In my local town, I believe for the first time ever, one of the major Spanish parties is actively looking to entice non-Spanish residents to vote for them.

So I guess we in Bradford shouldn't grumble about election leaflets in Urdu!

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Spain - not a revolution just democracy!

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A great deal of gushing left-wing excitement is littering the web as assorted commentators, bloggers and tweeters get all “oooh, gosh, revolution” about some protests in Madrid. Protests that coincide with today’s municipal elections across the country.

Here a pretty typical example:

The demonstrators have had enough of a political system that fails to represent them, one that restricts their power to expressing a preference every few years for one identikit professional politician or another. This is a far more radical politics. This is a crisis of confidence in democracy under capitalism when the failure of the free-markets is being used as an excuse to extend their poisonous reach.

Well maybe they have but, in truth, there aren’t very many of them are there! A bit like UK Uncut we get a lot of froth and noise, a bit of wanton destruction and some ace sloganising – all of which zooms past the ordinary voter more bothered about their job, the kids’ education and the level of crime. At their peak with a social media whirlwind of promotion and support the protester mustered about 30,000 in Madrid and similar protests in other Spanish cities brought out barely 10,000.

Meanwhile the Spanish voters are setting about visiting the worst defeat on the Socialists since the return of democracy – exit polls are suggesting the PSOE has lost control of Barcelona for the first time in 32 years and this indicates that it will be a pretty dire night for the Spanish left.  And the winners will not be strange coalitions of protesting pseudo-anarchists, bored students or green agitators but the opposition parties – the centre-right, Partido Popular and the assortment of separatist and regionalist groups that make up Spanish politics.

Some 12 million or so Spaniards have taken part in real democracy today – electing councillors, mayors and regional assemblies. Tens of thousands of Spaniards have actively campaigned in support of favoured candidates, thousands have put their name forward for election and millions have discussed and debated what should happen. The people protesting in Madrid are put a small part of this debate – it isn’t a revolution, it’s just the untidiness of democracy in action.

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A comment on Spanish local elections and British apathy!

There are local elections in Spain this weekend - elections which are likely to see a thorough trouncing for the ruling Socialist Party:

According to the election polls, the center-right Partido Popular (PP) will handily defeat the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) that may be left without control of any major Spanish city.

But this comment isn't about who will win but about how many of the 370,000 foreign residents in Andalucia will be voting - with the answer being 'not many'. Here are the numbers:

The number of foreigners registered to vote around Andalucia on May 22 stands at 82,483. This means if all the registered foreign voters turn out on the day they would certainly change the political map. The degree of influence however depends on the municipality.

Interestingly, nearly half of the foreigners registered to vote – 40,410 – are resident in Malaga province alone, where there are an incredible 152 foreign candidates hoping to become local councillors.

And half of those voters are British, which means that Spanish politicians are - for perhaps the first time - actively targeting these voters:

In my local town, I believe for the first time ever, one of the major Spanish parties is actively looking to entice non-Spanish residents to vote for them.

The PP candidate sent this message (and arranged a meeting):

The party wishes to present their candidate at the municipal elections, Francisco Góngora Cara, who will stand for mayor of El Ejido, to the foreign residents of El Ejido.

Francisco Góngora in his meetings with local residents appreciates the participation and understanding of the party´s electoral programme for the next four years; he is also calling this meeting in order to know at first hand the worries, needs and aspirations of the foreign population here in El Ejido.

The problem is that - if past form is a guide - most British residents won't be voting either because they're not registered to vote or from apathy. However, not all are so apathetic.

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