These are the four mayors who earn the most money: they charge more than Pedro Sánchez

Earning more as mayor in a big city than the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in Moncloa is not common, but there are four cases in which this occurs; There are, in addition, first councilors of small towns with salaries similar to that of Sánchez himself, and thousands who do not receive anything for their function.

The analysis of the remuneration of the mayors distributed throughout the Spanish geography reveals great differences. Because? Is it normal for a mayor to earn more than a president of the Government? Who decides what a mayor earns?

A few years ago Óscar Puente defended, with data as his base, his payroll as mayor of Valladolid. A job in which, he recalled, he is in charge of a city, 3,200 workers, a budget of 360 million and “without having Sundays or holidays to save”. He did it, in a tweet, as a criticism of what Toni Cantó was going to charge “for scratching his balls” in a position in the Community of Madrid.

How is it decided how much a mayor earns?

Puente is one of the ten mayors who earn the most in Spain, four exceed Sánchez's 90,010 euros and, in turn, all of them have a lower payroll than some regional presidents.

The Local Regime Bases Law sets the salary cap for mayors and members of corporations with a system linked to the population of the municipality and based on the salary earned by a secretary of state, set by the general state budget. Thus, the mayors of municipalities with more than 500,000 inhabitants can earn the same as a Secretary of State, those who are between 300,000 and 500,000 the same amount less 10% and so on.

[Puente rejects Bildu's lists but denies wear and tear at the polls: “What do I have to do with the ETA members?”]

The limits of a mayor's salary are set by the aforementioned law, but the amount up to that limit is decided by the plenary session of the corporation. This will be one of the first decisions that the new teams will take, once the elections are held on May 28 and the town councils are constituted, on June 17.

It could happen as happened in the City Council of Barcelona in 2015, when Barcelona en Comú wanted to lower the salaries of the councilors but the proposal did not prosper as it did not have the support of the rest of the groups. And it is that the plenary not only approves the salary of the mayor, but also of the rest of the councilors.

Which are the mayors of Spain that earn the most money

On the podium of the mayors with the highest payroll are the mayor of Bilbao, Juan Mari Aburto, who earns 115,299 euros, followed by the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida, who receives 108,517 euros a year; and the mayoress of Barcelona, Ada Colau, who charges 100,000 euros a year, according to the information on the websites of her municipalities.

The next on the list, also above what Sánchez earns, is the mayor of Vitoria, Gorka Urtaran, with an annual income of 91,323 euros.

The salaries of other mayors are striking, such as that of Arona, a town in the south of Tenerife with a population of around 75,000 inhabitants, whose councilor, José Julián Mena, charges 83,054 euros a year. Arona has an annual budget of 107 million euros.

For comparison, Madrid has a budget of 5,400 million euros; Barcelona of 3,595 and Bilbao of 663 million.

Comparison of salaries of mayors with regional presidents

The comparison with the regional presidents also leaves other data, such as that the one who earns the most of all of them is the Catalan.

Pere Aragonès enters the year 136,177 euros; the “lehendakari”, 108,913 euros; the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, 103,090 euros; and the Valencian Ximo Puig, 88,740.

[The figures of Almeida in the campaign: a thousand police officers, 1,800 officials in a historic market and 500,000 trees]

Below all of them, at the local level, we find two mayors who earn a symbolic euro per year: those of Preixens (Lleida) and Arconada (Palencia).

And at the end of the table there are around 2,500 mayors who do not get paid for the performance of their work.. Of course, in these cases, normally in small municipalities, they do not have exclusive dedication.

So the 28M elections will leave us new and old mayors, but also new and old salaries for them.