It is important to vote

2015

2011

2007

These charts from the last three Municipal Elections show the importance of voting.

You can see that the percentage of people voting dropped from almost 89% in 2007 and just over 86% in 2011 to almost 79% in 2015. At the same time, there was an increase in spoilt papers. The  number of votes needed to gain control of the council was effectively less last time than in previous elections.

Municipal elections should be about the people standing rather than political allegiance. In other words electing the group who you think will best do the job of running the town.

We saw how issues with Brexit affected the results of local elections in the UK and that was a nonsense. Good councillors and well run councils lost out because of something they had no responsibility for.  Hopefully, that will not happen here in Spain this year.

Whichever party you intend to vote for, the important thing is to actually make sure that you go down on May 26th and make your intention known and please don't waste your time writing on the paper or putting an empty envelope in the box because a protest vote is no more use than an abstention.