No 946 Monday 21st - Sunday 27th November 2022
637 227 385
office@theleader.info
Keeping people safe and informed for over 18 years - The Costa Blanca’s oldest ‘FREE’ English language newspaper
YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE
ix months prior to the next municipal elections the campaign to encourage residents to vote is intensifying in Orihuela, especially on the Coast, with special focus on international residents. In the municipality there are 70,379 registered people of legal age of 116 nationalities. The are made up by Spanish (43,959), followed by the United Kingdom (9,936), Morocco (1,914), Russia (1,358), Belgium (1,258) and Ukraine (1,062).
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Orihuela Costa represents a third of the municipal population, however, at the last municipal elections in 2019, of the almost 8,000 registered on the electoral roll, only 2,528 people actually voted In an effort to expand that figure, particularly for non Spanish residents, a presentation took place last Thursday morning, organised by the Department of Immigration and Citizen Participation. Although most of the seats were taken, the attendance was less than 50 people, many of them employees of the Municipal Government, councillors, aides, assessors and local staff. Of the remaining personnel, a third were Spanish, Irish, German, Norwegian and Icelandic, none of whom were affected by the changing legislation, leaving a group of approximately 20 people from the United Kingdom, this from a British population in the Orihuela municipality of almost 10,000. Nevertheless, in the presence of Juan De Dios Navarro, the Deputy for International Residents of the Alicante Province, Brahim El Habib, also from the Alicante Diputacion, the Orihuela Councillor for Statistics, Ángel Luis Muñoz, and the British Vice Consul Sara Munsterhejlm, the conference got underway. It was explained, largely by the Vice Consul, that, following BREXIT, the United Kingdom and Spain signed a reciprocal agreement entitling residents of each country to vote in the Municipal or Local elections, the next of which will be held in Spain on 28 May 2023.
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