Ogassa is a small city within the Girona Pyrenees with 240 inhabitants, based on knowledge from the National Institute of Statistics for 2021, which lately is immersed in controversy as a result of a dozen individuals haven’t been capable of register within the municipality over the past month. The mayor Josep Tremps (ERC) has denounced a wave of “mass census registrations” with electoral aims.
The mining previous of this Pyrenean city gave method to depopulation, like so many different elements of emptied Spain. Currently, it retains a single restaurant, a handful of rural lodging and dozens of second houses. Neighbors say that about 50 individuals reside through the week. Now a gaggle of neighbors assures that they haven’t been capable of register since final November 12.
“The metropolis council has not denied it, however the course of, which is often carried out in a couple of hours, isn’t advancing both,” Carles Mercader, a resident of the city and member of the Association of Vein People and Friends of Ogassa, who will current an electoral candidacy in Municipalities, defined to NIUS. May 2023.
The mayor of the city, for his half, has denounced “the large registration of people that don’t reside within the city” in a letter from the Santa Bàrbara competition program: “We suspect that they intend to go the municipal register to greater than 250 inhabitants and thus must make elections with closed lists”, assures the mayor and warns that the regulation establishes that folks have to be registered the place they reside a lot of the 12 months, for which he implies that he’ll examine whether or not stated purposes reside within the municipality .
One step away from closed lists
Municipalities with lower than 250 inhabitants maintain municipal elections with open lists through which voters can select the candidates they wish to be a part of the federal government (as happens in elections to the Senate). From 250 registrants, candidates should current closed lists of seven individuals. The mayor believes that with the transfer to a closed listing “you don’t vote for the particular person however for a listing and it’s masked whether or not the voters need a particular particular person or not,” he argues.
The affected residents take into account denouncing Tremps for trespass in the event that they fail to register efficiently. Carles Mercader is one in all them: “My daughter and I are registered in Ogassa and now I can’t transfer ahead with the register of my one-and-a-half-year-old son,” he says. They warn that any metropolis council is obliged to register anybody who requests it: “Squatters or homeless individuals will be registered and right here we can’t register homeowners or individuals with a rental contract,” he denounces.
The affiliation, which can current a listing within the subsequent municipal elections, suspects that the City Council is following a maneuver to not register these residents till at the very least January 31, 2023, which is when the electoral census is closed: “The regulation establishes that we can’t current an administrative dispute for this matter till after three months, which might already be after the electoral census is shipped,” denounced Mercader. The affiliation assures that it’s going to problem.
From neighborhood affiliation to celebration
The Association of Veïns i Veïnes de Ogassa Friends was created barely a 12 months in the past by some thirty residents of the city: “It was created to revitalize the city. We are a small city that’s fading away. We created a celebration committee, we requested to reform a social place for the neighbors to satisfy. We needed to lend a cable to the City Council, which is proscribed to a mayor and a councilor as a result of it’s a small city. But they noticed us as enemies,” says Mercader.
Tempers flared and the opposition group started to take form amongst them. The affiliation was constituted as a celebration in March of this 12 months. They guarantee that they’re a transversal listing that has declined to hitch any Catalan celebration.
Josep Tremps has been mayor of the municipality since 2011 and within the letter for these festivities he has introduced that he is not going to seem on the municipal elections in May however will assist the candidacy of Albert Solà, the present councilor of the municipality. Tremps, who has not responded to NIUS, assures that this neighborhood motion interprets into “the likelihood that there’s somebody who’s afraid of not being essentially the most voted and, due to this fact, not with the ability to be the legit mayor chosen by the city on some lists open”.