Love thy neighbour...or not really? Towns' merger put to public vote
22/02/2022
RESIDENTS of two towns in the far-western region of Extremadura were called upon to vote on Sunday whether they wanted to merge and become one bigger municipality.
A referendum was authorised by the State in early November, as both local councils believed they would become socially, financially and politically stronger if they joined forces – but they wanted to know what the people living in them thought.
The 37,300 inhabitants in Don Benito, and the 25,800 in neighbouring Villanueva de la Serena, in the province of Badajoz – which borders onto Portugal – where they were aged at least 16, were urged to cast their ballots, and both mayors had set a minimum threshold of 66% for 'yes' in each of the towns as a condition of going ahead with the merger.
All political parties along the spectrum from right to left, in both councils, are in favour of the move, and Don Benito's mayor José Luis Quintana and his counterpart in Villanueva de la Serena, Miguel Ángel Gallardo – both on the socialist, or PSOE party – have been leading a 'yes' campaign for the past four months.
They have been backed by MPs from elsewhere in the country, and published data from a detailed report drawn up by the Faculty of Business Economics at Extremadura University showing how the two smaller towns could benefit from being one large one of 63,100 residents.
A tale of two towns, or one city
In practice, as Villanueva de la Serena has a 'city' charter, despite its small size, the resulting municipality will be a city rather than a town, and will be the third-largest in Extremadura after the two provincial capitals of Badajoz (151,000 inhabitants) and Cáceres (96,500 residents), knocking the splendid Roman metropolis of Mérida (with 60,000) into fourth place.
On its own, Don Benito is the fifth-largest, after Plasencia (around 40,000), and Villanueva de la Serena is the seventh-largest after Almendralejo (with 34,000).
In total, Extremadura has 398 municipalities, of which eight have fewer than 100 inhabitants – the smallest of them being Campillo de Deleitosa, with just 79 people in residence.
The main argument for the merger is that the resulting city would be the region's biggest agricultural-industrial sector hub, benefiting from joint productivity which would rise through economies of scale, and allowing greater investment in social programmes and infrastructure.
One of Don Benito's biggest visitor attractions is its Classic Car Museum, which might be enough to persuade fans of four-wheeled antiques in Villanueva de la Serena to vote to join their neighbours.
Imbalance of enthusiasm
Whether the petrolhead population in the latter town was significant enough to sway the vote is something that may never be revealed, but among those who had their say in Villanueva de la Serena, 90% were in favour of linking up with Don Benito.
In Don Benito, though, there was less enthusiasm, and the result was a very near miss: Just 66.27% voters were keen to merge with the next-door town, or 0.27 percentage points above the cut-off – only a handful of the voters needed to have changed their minds at the last minute to bring the 'yes' answers below the 66% threshold and scupper the entire project.
With minutes to go before the polls closed, 'yes' votes from Don Benito were hovering at around 61%, meaning it was touch and go.
The fusion will not happen overnight, though. The next local elections across Spain are in May 2023, but the two town councils think this could be too soon and have opted to get residents to vote on their single local government in May 2027, from which point the 'new' city will have officially been created.
Combining their affairs will take years, involving extensive research into local council solvency, standardisation of local bye-laws, tax regulations and town plans, and streamlining public services and town hall employees – plus, of course, an 'ideas contest' to decide on the new name.
Only the third town merger in living history...
This renaming may not end up involving too much imagination, however, as the only other two mergers to have taken place in Spain's democratic history have shown.
Legislation allowing for non-binding referenda on town mergers came into effect in 1985, but the only two authorised prior to Don Benito and Villanueva de la Serena – each of which resulted in a majority of the population in favour – were in 2013 and 2017, both in the far north-western region of Galicia.
In the province of A Coruña, Oza, with 2,000 residents, joined Cesuras, with 3,000, giving rise to a town of 5,000 people called Oza-Cesuras.
Four years later, in the province of Pontevedra, Cerdedo's 1,800 residents and Cotobade's 4,000 inhabitants voted to link up and create a town of 5,800 people called Cerdedo-Cotobade.
...except for Setla, Mirarrosa and Miraflor, which did it gradually
One other, similar case happened before the 1985 legislation, by way of a one-off regional government decree – the villages of Setla and Mirarrosa in the far northern hinterland of the province of Alicante hooked up together and became Setla-Mirarrosa in the 1800s, then the government of the Comunidad Valenciana allowed the resulting single municipality to merge with its neighbour, Miraflor, in 1971.
It would be another 20 years, though, before the three were lumped together under one name.
Collectively, from the 1971 merger, locals referred to Setla-Mirarrosa and Miraflor as els poblets, or 'the little villages' in the regional language, valenciano.
In 1991, this title became official, and according to the last census, the coastal village of Els Poblets, around 10 kilometres north of the better-known and larger holiday hotspot Dénia, had a total population of just over 2,700 residents.
Of these, three in five are foreign nationals, mostly Europeans.
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RESIDENTS of two towns in the far-western region of Extremadura were called upon to vote on Sunday whether they wanted to merge and become one bigger municipality.
A referendum was authorised by the State in early November, as both local councils believed they would become socially, financially and politically stronger if they joined forces – but they wanted to know what the people living in them thought.
The 37,300 inhabitants in Don Benito, and the 25,800 in neighbouring Villanueva de la Serena, in the province of Badajoz – which borders onto Portugal – where they were aged at least 16, were urged to cast their ballots, and both mayors had set a minimum threshold of 66% for 'yes' in each of the towns as a condition of going ahead with the merger.
All political parties along the spectrum from right to left, in both councils, are in favour of the move, and Don Benito's mayor José Luis Quintana and his counterpart in Villanueva de la Serena, Miguel Ángel Gallardo – both on the socialist, or PSOE party – have been leading a 'yes' campaign for the past four months.
They have been backed by MPs from elsewhere in the country, and published data from a detailed report drawn up by the Faculty of Business Economics at Extremadura University showing how the two smaller towns could benefit from being one large one of 63,100 residents.
A tale of two towns, or one city
In practice, as Villanueva de la Serena has a 'city' charter, despite its small size, the resulting municipality will be a city rather than a town, and will be the third-largest in Extremadura after the two provincial capitals of Badajoz (151,000 inhabitants) and Cáceres (96,500 residents), knocking the splendid Roman metropolis of Mérida (with 60,000) into fourth place.
On its own, Don Benito is the fifth-largest, after Plasencia (around 40,000), and Villanueva de la Serena is the seventh-largest after Almendralejo (with 34,000).
In total, Extremadura has 398 municipalities, of which eight have fewer than 100 inhabitants – the smallest of them being Campillo de Deleitosa, with just 79 people in residence.
The main argument for the merger is that the resulting city would be the region's biggest agricultural-industrial sector hub, benefiting from joint productivity which would rise through economies of scale, and allowing greater investment in social programmes and infrastructure.
One of Don Benito's biggest visitor attractions is its Classic Car Museum, which might be enough to persuade fans of four-wheeled antiques in Villanueva de la Serena to vote to join their neighbours.
Imbalance of enthusiasm
Whether the petrolhead population in the latter town was significant enough to sway the vote is something that may never be revealed, but among those who had their say in Villanueva de la Serena, 90% were in favour of linking up with Don Benito.
In Don Benito, though, there was less enthusiasm, and the result was a very near miss: Just 66.27% voters were keen to merge with the next-door town, or 0.27 percentage points above the cut-off – only a handful of the voters needed to have changed their minds at the last minute to bring the 'yes' answers below the 66% threshold and scupper the entire project.
With minutes to go before the polls closed, 'yes' votes from Don Benito were hovering at around 61%, meaning it was touch and go.
The fusion will not happen overnight, though. The next local elections across Spain are in May 2023, but the two town councils think this could be too soon and have opted to get residents to vote on their single local government in May 2027, from which point the 'new' city will have officially been created.
Combining their affairs will take years, involving extensive research into local council solvency, standardisation of local bye-laws, tax regulations and town plans, and streamlining public services and town hall employees – plus, of course, an 'ideas contest' to decide on the new name.
Only the third town merger in living history...
This renaming may not end up involving too much imagination, however, as the only other two mergers to have taken place in Spain's democratic history have shown.
Legislation allowing for non-binding referenda on town mergers came into effect in 1985, but the only two authorised prior to Don Benito and Villanueva de la Serena – each of which resulted in a majority of the population in favour – were in 2013 and 2017, both in the far north-western region of Galicia.
In the province of A Coruña, Oza, with 2,000 residents, joined Cesuras, with 3,000, giving rise to a town of 5,000 people called Oza-Cesuras.
Four years later, in the province of Pontevedra, Cerdedo's 1,800 residents and Cotobade's 4,000 inhabitants voted to link up and create a town of 5,800 people called Cerdedo-Cotobade.
...except for Setla, Mirarrosa and Miraflor, which did it gradually
One other, similar case happened before the 1985 legislation, by way of a one-off regional government decree – the villages of Setla and Mirarrosa in the far northern hinterland of the province of Alicante hooked up together and became Setla-Mirarrosa in the 1800s, then the government of the Comunidad Valenciana allowed the resulting single municipality to merge with its neighbour, Miraflor, in 1971.
It would be another 20 years, though, before the three were lumped together under one name.
Collectively, from the 1971 merger, locals referred to Setla-Mirarrosa and Miraflor as els poblets, or 'the little villages' in the regional language, valenciano.
In 1991, this title became official, and according to the last census, the coastal village of Els Poblets, around 10 kilometres north of the better-known and larger holiday hotspot Dénia, had a total population of just over 2,700 residents.
Of these, three in five are foreign nationals, mostly Europeans.