The Riosequillo pool, in Buitrago de Lozoya (Madrid), accommodates the entire population of the municipality. With an area of almost 4,500 square meters, at two bathers per meter, there is plenty of space for the almost 2,000 inhabitants of the town. This is not a test of the program What do we bet?, but a curiosity that is extracted from the information on swimming pools throughout the country downloaded from the website of the General Directorate of Cadastre.

Spain has at least 1,277,052 outdoor swimming pools, according to the latest data published. This figure, however, does not include those of the Basque Country and Navarra, which have their own cadastral sources. Nor those that have not been declared. Find your street on the map to locate the pools around you and explore the areas with the most pools.

With an area of more than 14.5 hectares and 1,200 meters in length, the Olympic Channel of Catalonia, in Castelldefels, is among the largest facilities in all of Spain. However, this artificial channel is reserved for sports such as canoeing, water skiing or windsurfing..

Yes, the more than 17,000 square meters of Lake Martiánez, a set of swimming pools next to the Atlantic located in Puerto de la Cruz, in Tenerife, are destined for bathing.. The largest of them all exceeds 12,500 square meters. Both are public facilities.

To the south of the same island is the largest tourist offer in Tenerife. There, in Adeje, is the Siam Park water park, in which one of its vessels occupies 1.04 hectares. It is one of the attractions in the Canary Islands that receives the most visits, according to the advertising of the Loro Parque group, owner of the center.

Back on the Peninsula, between the provinces of Cádiz and Málaga, Casares has an artificial lagoon, Alcazaba Lagoon, of 1.4 hectares. This artificial lagoon is made up of a large leisure and restaurant complex. Inside, with a capacity of 3,572 people, the Puerta del Hierro pool in Madrid, with a sheet of water of 6,545 square meters.

Madrid, capital of swimming pools

In absolute numbers, Madrid is the city with the largest number of outdoor pools: a total of 14,127. Throughout the summer, the rows of refrigerators, mats and sunglasses are drawn at the doors of each trusted municipal swimming pool, in many of which it is quite a feat to get entry. The capital is followed by Córdoba, Marbella and Murcia, all of them with more than 10,000 places, between public and private, to take a bath..

Chiclana de la Frontera is also another benchmark, being the fifth municipality with the largest number of swimming pools (9,318). This town on the Cadiz coast contrasts with the capital of its province, Cádiz, where there are barely 35 pools. For its part, the second most populous city in the country, Barcelona, barely reaches 1,500, 10 times less than those registered in Madrid..

The Spanish coasts are dotted with private pools, especially in the Mediterranean area, where more than half of the total is concentrated.. The concentration of swimming pools in provinces with beaches is much more pronounced than in inland ones. Alicante, for example, which has 1.9 million inhabitants, has 128,293 swimming pools, which means about 67 pools for every 1,000 inhabitants.. Madrid, with three times the population, has a ratio of two. In the beach municipalities, if you can have the best of both worlds, perfect.

An example from Alicante is Jávea, the sixth municipality with the most swimming pools. Here there is one for every three inhabitants. On the coast of the Valencian Community, the rows of swimming pools draw the shape of the urbanizations and chalets. Counterintuitive or not, coastal areas are much more likely to be covered in pools. Jávea is no exception: second homes and tourism raise the pool count. A few kilometers away, the municipalities of Teulada and Benissa each have more than 4,000 swimming pools for less than 12,000 residents..

Girona, with a total of 43,303 pools, also enjoys the same landscape of blue dots: Castelló d'Empúries, with a population of more than 11,000 people, has 242.6 bathing spaces for every 1,000 inhabitants.. The same is the case with Begur, which, with just over 4,000 inhabitants, has a total of 1,849 swimming pools..

Those who live in the driest areas of the Peninsula do not miss the opportunity to soak their feet. An inland municipality like El Casar de Escalona, in the province of Toledo, has the peculiarity of having a number of inhabitants (1,891) and pools (1,406) close to parity. In Castilnuevo, in Guadalajara, there is exactly one pool for each neighbor. At the beginning of 2022, six people were registered in the register: the same number of pools that the cadastre records there.

Eight out of 10, in private residences

The cadastre data also has information on the ownership or type of use of the pools. 85% of the pools are for residential use, while only 3% are public. If we measure the surface they occupy, the situation is similar. 61.4% correspond to residential pools, while 10.2% are public. The rest has other uses, such as commercial, agricultural or industrial, according to the categorization of the cadastre and, although they barely touch 12% of the total, its area is 28.4%..

“We have noticed an increase in demand due to the pandemic. It has been the boom between 2020 and 2021”, says Agustí Ferrer, general director of the Spanish Association of Professionals in the Pool Sector. This sector moves more than 1,500 million euros, according to the spokesperson, to be distributed among more than 2,000 companies dedicated to design, construction, installation and maintenance.

Since work and fun can also go hand in hand, 449 offices in Spain have a swimming pool for their employees to enjoy during or after the workday. The location of these is very similar to that of the rest of the private pools, since they are concentrated especially in the south of the peninsula and in the Mediterranean area.

It is difficult to find a municipality that does not have any place for registered bathing. Of the 7,608 towns for which there is information, without counting the Basque Country and Navarra, only 759 have no swimming pool.

The largest municipality with these conditions is Navia de Suarna, located in the province of Lugo and with a population close to 1,000 inhabitants.. In the case of Emperador, located in Valencia, the reasons why its more than 700 inhabitants cannot enjoy a bath are quite justified: with 0.33 km², it is the smallest population center in Spain and also the one with the largest population density has. Sometimes, not having a pool has a casuistry of force majeure.

Methodology

As if the electoral campaign was not complicated enough for the left, the second installment of Hello! about the wedding of Tamara Falcó and Íñigo Onieva, full of dire signs of an imminent change of regime in Spain..

In fact, you have to know how to read the signs.

On Monday, July 10, 2023, the newsstands ran out of copies of the first display of the Hello! Spain was only concerned about the bodorrio. Conservative block on the rise. Since nothing happens by chance, that night, Alberto Núñez Feijóo beat Pedro Sánchez by surprise face to face.

Don't you understand the relationship between one thing and another? Listen: within the Hello! There are several chilling documents that show that Spain is already on to something else:

1) Tamara and Íñigo's pages are dressed in Tyrolean bloomers (what Woody Allen would call children dressed up to invade Poland, and Hello!, always well versed in the art of euphemism, “Austrian-inspired costumes”).

2) On page 43 of the first part of the serial, there is a photo of Tamara “sitting in front of the dressing table, with a trifold mirror, with which she prepared herself for the big day, under the watchful eye of her abricot poodle, Jacinta”.

A poodle. Jacinta. little joke.

What the publication does not mention is that Jacinta is wearing an indescribable white bow. In reality, Jacinta does not look at Tamara, but at the void, that is, at the future. What does Tamara's poodle see? If the right wins, will there be more premium cookies for puppies like her?

But Tamara's poodle is heartbroken. He hides a terrible secret: he is saddened that the first member of his race to become president of the Government —Perrosanxe— is in trouble. During the last few years, Jacinta has kept her admiration for Perrosanxe silent because, according to her, “she did not want to disturb Mistress Tamara”.

Dwarf dogs, in short, also have feelings. Let's be clear: although she blushes just thinking about it, Jacinta is in love with Perrosanxe…. but a poodle from high society should not mix with socialist, batasuno or Bolivarian mongrels.

In the new issue of Hello! is announced on the cover: “The most anticipated interview. Íñigo speaks for the first time and releases his feelings”.

Well, I double the bet. The most anticipated interview. Jacinta the poodle speaks for the first time and releases her feelings:

Jacinta speaks (with an open heart):

“My feelings towards Perrosanxe are deep, but I must hide them out of loyalty to my mistress. woof woof. In addition, I have lived unforgettable moments in this mansion. I have seen Don Mario Vargas Llosa read his books in French aloud during meals (also at snacks and dinners). I have seen my mistress's mother, Mrs. Isabel Preysler, listen to ballads by Julio Iglesias while she sighed melancholy.. I have seen the ladies of the house do spiritualism with Isabelita Perón, and speak with Archduke Francisco Ferdinand of Austria from beyond. I have seen ladies with cardados make little trains in the living room while listening to El Consorcio's El chachachá del tren. I have seen Porcelanosa tiles so bright that they reflected the entire solar system. I have seen Mistress Tamara sign contracts with the Hello! for all the first communions of the family until 2073. All these moments will be lost like tears in the rain… Nothing will ever be the same again. I suspect that Perrosanxe is going to leave through one door and Íñigo Onieva is going to enter through the other. Master Onieva has cloudy eyes. I don't like. But I'm not going to tell Mistress Tamara, because I don't want to disturb her. Wow!”.

There is only one Member State of the European Union that has expelled a non-violent political dissident sentenced to death in his country of origin: Spain. The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, did it on March 24, 2022..

Mohamed Benhalima, a 33-year-old former Algerian police officer, arrived in Spain legally in 2019 and tried twice in vain to obtain asylum. was not granted. From his Spanish exile, he recorded videos on YouTube, where he had up to 155,000 followers, denouncing corruption in his country's army. Algeria did not request his extradition, but Grande-Marlaska handed him over, chartering an Iberia plane almost to himself.. Until then, the Algerians had only been expelled by boat.

The minister thus tried to appease Algerian anger at Pedro Sánchez's alignment with Morocco, embodied, on March 14, 2022, in a letter to King Mohamed VI, supporting his proposal to resolve the Western Sahara conflict by circumventing the self-determination referendum.. It didn't help.

Mohamed Benhalima was waiting in his country for a death sentence pronounced in absentia by the Blida military court, which will probably not be carried out because a moratorium has been in force in Algeria since 1993. He also had a string of trials pending – he counted to 19 – although before he was “physically attacked” by the security forces, according to Amnesty International..

Seven months earlier, in August 2021, Grande-Marlaska already starred in another controversial first expulsion of another Algerian, also a former soldier, Mohamed Abdellah, who was not granted asylum either.. He was the forerunner of Benhalima in his YouTube denunciation of corruption among the Algerian military hierarchy. He lived in the Basque Country with his wife and two young children, who were saved from deportation. In Bilbao or Madrid, his family demonstrates regularly asking for the father to be released.

Both ex-military men were affiliated with Rachad, an opposition movement that the Algerian authorities label as terrorist.. It had non-violent Islamist origins from which it departed to open up to secular dissent. Its address is in London and its managers move around the EU without restrictions. The French police even went as far as advising their leader in France on how to protect herself from the surveillance of the agents in Algiers.. Amnesty International also does not doubt the “democratic commitment” of the two Algerian deportees.

Lawyer Alejandro Gámez and the network of lawyers to which he belongs have brought the case before the United Nations Committee against Torture to rule on whether, in the case of Benhalima, fundamental rights were violated, because no one can be expelled who run the risk of being tortured. Even the UN High Commissioner for Refugees warned that this danger existed, but Grande-Marlaska ignored it.. When the committee makes its decision, in a few months, he will have long since ceased to be a minister.

Grande-Marlaska debuted with the controversial expulsions three months after taking office. He deported to Egypt the imam of Logroño, the Egyptian Alaa Mohamed Said, linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist movement, but not violent. He ignored the concern expressed by the European Court of Human Rights about the risk of the cleric suffering “inhuman treatment” upon arrival.. So it was. If he really posed a danger to national security, as the Police alleged in a muddled report on Islamic currents, the Interior could have sent the imam to Qatar, the refuge country of the Muslim Brotherhood..

The bullshit in the field of human rights obviously has a Moroccan side. Grande-Marlaka answered, in January 2019, a request for the surrender of the Saharawi activist Hussein Bachir Brahim, who had just disembarked from a small boat in Lanzarote. He was not even given the opportunity to apply for asylum. Upon his return, he was sentenced to 12 years for murder in a trial in which no evidence of his guilt was provided..

In the case of Morocco, the contempt for human rights transcends the head of the Interior to reach the president. Sánchez justified, on January 19, that the Spanish socialist MEPs voted, in plenary session of the European Parliament, against the first resolution, in 26 years, on human rights in Morocco. It asked Rabat, among other things, for the release of three influential imprisoned journalists and that of Nasser Zefzafi, leader of the peaceful revolt of the Rif, sentenced to 20 years. The PSOE and the French extreme right joined in the Eurochamber their votes to reject the resolution, which was approved by a large majority.

That was not a surprise. In October 2021, when the reconciliation of Spain with Morocco had not yet been sealed, the Spanish socialists had already urged their European co-religionists to vote for the Vox candidate, the former Bolivian coup president Jeanine Áñez, for the Sakharov Prize.. The objective was to prevent the Saharawi activist Sultana Khaya from being among the finalists for the human rights award. They made it.

In Morocco there is a prisoner of conscience, the octogenarian Mohamed Ziane, former Minister of Human Rights, who has Spanish nationality —his mother was from Malaga and he was born in that city—, in addition to the Moroccan. He has been serving a three-year prison sentence since November for a string of alleged crimes. Basically, he is in jail because he dared to denounce in a video the prolonged absences from the country of Mohamed VI and asked him to abdicate to make way for his son..

The parliamentary group of the Popular Party asked the government in writing in January if it had information about the case and if Ziane had been offered the support of the Spanish consulate in Rabat. As in all other questions about human rights and freedom of the press in the Maghreb, the Executive answered evasively. In his reply, he even omitted the name of the person in whose fate the popular had been interested..

There are influential socialists who, despite not being in government, are equally insensitive to human rights in North Africa. Former President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero did not reply, for example, to a letter sent to him in April by wives and a mother of Moroccan prisoners of conscience, begging him to carry out work in his country similar to the one he carried out in Venezuela, where he did achieved the release of several opponents.

The socialist government applies a double yardstick. While turning his back on Maghrebi dissidents, he goes out of his way to pay attention to Latin Americans. In February, for example, it offered Spanish nationality to the 222 prisoners of conscience released by Nicaragua, deprived of their nationality and expelled to the United States.. “Spain is home to the defenders of democracy and freedom,” José Manuel Albares, Minister of Foreign Affairs, tweeted at the time, without specifying that this refuge was not suitable for Arabs..

The Spanish Agency for Development Cooperation has just inaugurated its Democracy Program, which includes scholarships in Spain, whose purpose is to support human rights defenders, but only in Latin America and Europe, according to its website..

The PP is not free of dust and straw in terms of human rights either. In the era of Mariano Rajoy at the helm of the Executive, in 2013, side by side with France, he prevented a proposal from the Obama Administration from prospering. The Department of State wanted to extend the mandate of the Minurso (United Nations contingent deployed in Western Sahara) so that it would have jurisdiction over human rights, something that worried Morocco. Paris and Madrid stopped Washington. The Spanish government also kept a cautious silence in the face of the repression of the peaceful revolt of the Rif (2017-18), the largest of all that Morocco has experienced during the reign of Mohamed VI.

Surprising as it may seem, the only Spanish Prime Minister who publicly expressed his concern for a prisoner of conscience in Morocco, the journalist Ali Lmrabet, was, in December 2003, José María Aznar. “I have spoken and I have expressed my interest in that person,” he declared after being received in audience in Marrakech by Mohamed VI. Lmrabet, director of the weeklies Demain and Douman, closed by the Moroccan Justice, was then serving a four-year prison sentence.

The Alaouite monarch pardoned him the month after meeting with Aznar. The journalist, with strong ties to Spain – he lives in exile in Barcelona – then traveled to Madrid. “I took advantage of Aznar's attendance at the presentation of a book at the Foundation for Analysis and Social Studies to approach him and thank him for his support,” recalls Lmrabet over the phone.

It is the silence that precedes the storm, the stillness of the din. Why is Irene Montero so quiet? We already know that they removed her from the electoral lists with a slap of the hand, that they made a target of blame and forgiveness with her face, that they severely applied the maximum punishment of politics, taking her out of the offices, removing her from the podiums and palms.. We already know that all this has happened, that Yolanda Díaz, the new leader of the ideological miscellany that exists to the left of the PSOE, which is the extreme left or the extreme left, has sought with her punishment the exemplary nature of a summary trial. Irene Montero, her political image, had to disappear so that Yolanda Díaz could be born. A gesture of authority and reaffirmation in the most convulsive political space in history, the one that brings together communists with socialists, Trotskyists with Stalinists.

That is why the public sacrifice of Irene Montero, which was like that of the witches in the Middle Ages, covered with pitch and chicken feathers, so that everyone knew. At first, he provoked the protest reaction of his Podemos colleagues, from Pablo Iglesias downwards, as if they were biting their fists.. But then, to the surprise of many, they accepted the punishment, they assumed the banishment and, in all that environment, which is always noisy and dirty, there was silence.. This disturbing silence of now that, for those who have doubts, is not the end of anything but the beginning of what will come.

Since the Sumar platform slipped the imperative to exclude the main referents of Podemos from the electoral lists, a struggle began for the definition of what was happening. A betrayal or a necessity? A reckoning between incompatible egos or a step forward to favor the unification of the left? Yolanda Díaz, as has been said, needed that blow of authority to reaffirm her leadership and to show herself free and independent, without mortgages or outside influences. On the other side, Pablo Iglesias, leading Podemos along with the others, understood almost instantly that he was in a dead end, that no one from Sumar, of the 10 or 15 movements that make it up, was going to come out in his defense.. The trap that Yolanda Díaz had hatched had left them alone.

Trapped in the spider web of unity that began to be woven with the resignation of Alberto Garzón, the leader of Izquierda Unida, to repeat in the candidacies. It was no longer a vendetta against Podemos, but a gesture of solidarity and humility that could not be denied. The step back of an individual does not mean anything, it is nothing, because what is essential is that the organization, the collective, advance. In other words, not only was no one going to recognize the betrayal of Podemos, but they ran the risk of being left before the electorate as a group of egoists, clinging to the seats, at the cost of breaking the unity of the left. So, trapped, they accepted and were silent..

Juan Carlos Monedero, preserved as in formaldehyde in his role as a haruspex of Podemos, without being affected by government disputes or the wear and tear of the laws, often repeats from the trapping of Podemos that the obligation of all militants and supporters is to vote for Sumar in the elections next Sunday, knowing that his former colleagues are the ones who have formed the firing squad to annihilate Irene Montero. The “firing squad” thing is up to him, Monedero and the rest of Podemos, as given as they are to recreating the Spain of the Civil War in the political environment. He calls them “desk shooters” and, in each line in which he asks for the vote for Sumar, hatred, contempt.

“It is striking that part of those who have shot at Irene Montero the most from the left are the same ones who are now demanding that she set up a speak corner at every street intersection to proclaim to the four winds the benefits of voting for Sumar (…) It has been an idiotic attitude, fueled by some sectors that badly advised Yolanda Díaz. And that they are responsible for the electoral ballast that the polls in Sumar detect today”, he wrote a few days ago in a press article in which he once again requested the vote for them.. “Despite everything, I am going to vote for them. And if I can, you can”, said Monedero. But was he really asking for the vote or is the interest another, hidden?

Each word of Monedero is equivalent to each silence of Irene Montero and they should only be interpreted as an attempt to draw up the minutes in this electoral campaign so that, as soon as the polls close, we can exculpate Podemos from the electoral fiasco and place all the responsibility on Yolanda Diaz and in Sumar. If the result of the polls is the one indicated by the vast majority of the polls that are being published, the silence of Irene Montero will break into a roar on the night of the elections. There will only be one person responsible for the failure, to which all the purples will point, in the last attempt to strike down the version imposed by Sumar and recover the leadership of that miscellany, which has been taken from them in these elections.

Some of the veterans of the United Left, such as Nicolás Sartorius, often repeat that in this political space there is “an evident inability to normalize and manage discrepancy.”. Yes, he will know, who in the time of Julio Anguita created Nueva Izquierda, a critical current within Izquierda Unida that ended up dynamiting the entire coalition. Those from Anguita said then that Nueva Izquierda was “a PSOE submarine”. After the general elections of 23-J, when the end of this time of silence is decreed, we will hear the same from Sumar, the PSOE submarine that wanted to sink Podemos.

After the closure of Sálvame, it did not take long for Kiko Matamoros to receive proposals to sit at another table. In this case, an electoral one, for the elections next Sunday. The television collaborator expressed his disbelief and indignation for this reason: “Those over 65 are exempt from being part of a polling station, but despite this they summon me as a substitute member”. Actually, the law allows a citizen to summon even if he is over this age, but Matamoros is right and because of his age (66 years) he has every right to be excluded from that table.

The electoral drama of aged Spain

The anecdote is having, however, a gloomy B-side in the town halls of many cities in inland Spain. Municipalities made up of a large number of seniors who, following the Matamoros doctrine, have been erased from the tables. The electoral boards are not able to find enough people to supervise and count the votes of the general elections of 23-J.

The law indicates certain exemptions when forming a polling station, which are resolved in order of age, among which are being over 65 years of age, the disabled, having changed residence to another autonomous community, pregnant with more than six months or on maternity leave, being an inmate in a prison or psychiatric hospital, having been part of a polling station three times during the previous 10 years or being the victim of a crime whose convicted or investigated person has a restraining order and is in the same census. Some of them, such as age, increase the possibility that the number of allegations is proportionally higher in aged municipalities in rural Spain..

This adds to the difficulties that many electoral boards are already encountering in trying to find presidents and members. The Soriano municipality of Almazán, with its 5,500 inhabitants, is one of the towns that had to repeat the draw a few weeks ago due to the lack of personnel available for the tables. The vote will take place in five days and, although the same urgency is no longer transmitted, the situation is still not quite on track. “There have been excuses, but here there are always more problems with local elections,” they explain from their Electoral Board to El Confidencial. “In small towns, many people go to the candidacies, so they cannot be at the table. It's hard to organize them.”.

12 kilometers from there is Escobosa de Almazán, a small town with 25 residents. In order for elections to be held next Sunday, they have had to register from the surrounding towns, precisely because their population is made up mostly of retirees who cannot or have voluntarily declined to participate in the elections..

Castilla y León, ground zero

The situation of this Spain, too old to sustain a democracy for several hours at 40 °C, is especially pressing in Castilla y León. It is not that it has more than 65, but it is the autonomous community where the population is more dispersed, there are a myriad of small towns with less than 100 inhabitants. Ávila is another of the areas of the country where the city councils are finding it more difficult to first gather a staff of presidents and board members to play on Sunday.

In the area that includes the capital, a total of 230 allegations have been received and up to nine polling stations out of the 59 in Ávila have received more than four allegations (although not all of their members have appeared at any), which has caused that a new raffle has to be carried out. In some centers, such as Diocesano or Reina Fabiola, there have been two tables where a new draw was held last Friday. The rest are Parque de Tráfico, IES Isabel de Castilla, CP Santa Ana, CP La Encarnación or CP San Esteban.

“This raffle does not modify the first one, in which the members of the tables have already been chosen, but it is complementary for the tables in which there has been an excess of absences”, explained the spokesman for the Ávila City Council, Jose Ramon Budino.

Another area in which allegations have been received is Arenas de San Pedro, as explained by the Provincial Board: this Wednesday the final lists for the holding of the elections must arrive. In one of the municipalities in the area, La Adrada, with 2,517 inhabitants, the allegations received once again show the added difficulties faced by small towns, beyond the usual vacations already booked: “Above all the people over the age of 65, who have moved to another municipality or one, who is a councilor,” they explain.

Same situation to the north, in El Bierzo. Ponferrada has been one of the most cited cities in recent weeks due to its alleged problems when completing the tables. An example of what was to come in many places in inland Spain on 23-J. But its Electoral Board assures this medium that all the attention comes from some erroneous data that was communicated in the press. “It has been said that only a few tables were complete, but the reality is that it is the opposite, there are only a few that remain to be completed,” explains the registry secretary of the Electoral Board of Ponferrada, José Miguel Carbajosa.. “Everything comes from a publication of the newspaper El Mundo, which gave some data that was not such. It is true that it has cost more to form the tables than on other occasions, but everything is ready for the elections to take place as normal,” he added..

According to the secretary, of the 84 polling stations in the capital of El Bierzo, only about five remain to be formalized, something that he assures will be achieved. “There are many days left and we are in a position for everything to go according to plan. Obviously, we have had to manage many excuses, because the call is what it is, but there is no risk, as seemed to be said”.

“Impressive number of excuses”

Age is an increasingly relevant factor, given the demographic structure towards which Spain is heading, but it is not being the main obstacle to compose the tables of 23-J. For the most part, the reason is none other than vacations, taken or to be taken. Throughout Spain, the members of the electoral boards of many provinces are living frantic days. In provinces such as Córdoba, Álava, Murcia, Ávila or Soria, up to four notification roundups have been necessary to find a minimum number of presidents and members. With each of these rounds, they have had to face an unprecedented number of allegations—justified in some cases and delusional in others—to try to extricate themselves from their duty..

The southern half of Córdoba, where part of the inhabitants traditionally spend their summers on the nearby Costa del Sol, is another problematic area when it comes to recruiting. In Cabra, Nueva Carteya, Doña Mencía, Aguilar de la Frontera or Puente Genil, they have had to carry out second draws. In Priego de Córdoba, they did the third a couple of days ago. “We have had to make new draws for 13 of the tables,” the secretary of the local Electoral Board explained to this newspaper. “The number of excuses that have come to us has been impressive, but little by little we have been resolving all the allegations and we practically have the fringes left”.

The consistory estimates the composition of its polling stations at 80%, and admits that although at first they were startled by the number of non-appearances, today the situation is reasonably controlled for Sunday. The electoral law provides that, in cases where a table has not been completed, the first voters to attend the polling station are the ones who end up being part of it..

At a time when the parties propose in their electoral programs different measures to delay the retirement age even up to 72 years, the age to be able to remove yourself from a polling station remains unchanged.