In the last cuts passed into law by the Government through a Royal Decree, a section deals with the amount of councillors the country has, which at present stands at 68,578. After applying a ‘culling’ the figure will stand at 47,240, which will not take place until the next municipal elections, which are about three years away. Strangely, this is beyond when the Government considers that Spain will leave the recession zone. So, only after we are supposedly already on the road to recovery, 21,338 fewer councillors will be elected to office (31%) … but there is a second catch.

Spain has 7,700 municipalities of fewer than 20,000 inhabitants – the total figure of municipalities is just over 8,000. Of those 7,700 municipalities, 90% of them have mayors and councillors who do not receive a salary for their work. Have a guess where our salary-earning decision makers will probably chop the 21,338 councillors? As yet, we do not know, but would you honestly be surprised if the two major parties quietly agree to cut the majority of them from the non-salary-earning ranks? We wouldn’t.

(News: Spain)