Someone Sensible in Marbella

Some towns want foreigners – more than others. While places like the Catalonian town of Vic or the Madrid town of Torrejon de Ardoz are in the news at the moment for not allowing ‘illegal’ foreigners to register on the padrón – the town hall register of inhabitants – and what the hell is an illegal human being anyway? – others, like Marbella, are keen to match, as closely as possible, the legal number of inhabitants with the actual number.

The Marbella ‘councilor for tourism and extranjeros’ (sigh!), one José Luis Hernandez, says that ‘The fact that the residents, whether Spanish or foreign, don’t get on the padrón contributes towards a collapse in public services. For this reason, we have only half of the number of police that we need, or hospital beds, or courthouses, schools, taxis, buses and so on for a city of this size’.

Marbella has 140,000 inhabitants (from 130 nationalities) officially, but the service industries, such as the local garbage collection company, estimate a year-round population of some 235,000 souls.

Mojácar and many other towns where foreigners live, whether the ‘illegal’ ones who have come here to work without papers, or the comparatively rich ones who have transferred themselves from one European country to another, are failing to get everybody onto the padrón, and the whole community suffers as a direct result.

Curiously, Marbella excepting, no other ‘tourist’ or ‘foreigner’ town has made efforts to address this problem – perhaps concerned by the threat of the ‘uncontrolled vote’ of the foreigners.

Don’t worry Mr Mayor – we’d all vote for YOU.