Whilst the votes in the municipal elections are known, in many cases we don't know who will govern, but in Valle del Zalabí we do because they flipped a coin.
The sitting socialist mayor won the toss so he’ll remain with the Mayor’s Baton for another four years. Pretty simple really.
The Valle del Zalabí is not a village, but rather it is a municipality comprising several of them: Alcudia, Exfiliana y Charches.
It’s a bit like La Taha in the Alpujarra, which is a grouping of small villages to make up one administrative municipality, too.
In the Valle del Zalabí both the PSOE and the PP had won 646 votes, or 49.23% of the votes cast each. The reason that it was not fifty percent each was that the PP had one more vote but the PSOE challenged it because the ballot paper was disfigured and it was discounted.
So, it was decided to flip a coin in front of a judge in a Guadix law court, and accept their fate on the spin. Obviously, the winner, Manuel Sánchez Mesa (PSOE) was over the moon but we can imagine that the PP candidate was left with “honey on his lips,” as the Spanish say meaning “so close but so far,” more or less.
This was not the first time that a mayor was elected on the flip of a coin, as the same thing occurred in Carataunas (Alpujarra) about 10-odd years ago.
Editorial comment: having watched the video, we could only conclude that as far as tossing a coin went, it was pretty useless and we’re surprised that the PP didn’t demand that it was done properly.
(News/Noticias: Valle del Zalabí, Guadix, Granada, Andalucia – Photo: Ideal)