Christmas lunch

This is the picture after the battle

  

Time to verify that there is a family, that they have not forgotten you, eat and drink.

Also good time to recap activities of the last months.

In fact, a lot of expectations accompagnied of few facts, but not reaching the minimum expectations. In fact, I've only some investigation paths, and a very limited set of data to work.
I'm starting to understand the time frame of this kind of research projects: nobody is expecting you to serve your interests.
I will use the 10 days of Christmas Holidays to see what can I do with the already available records, and to contact the political parties, which could be a source of information

a, b, c, d....

The original documents produced after a local election process, seem to have the origin not in the Province, but in the Zone Electoral Administration, so at a lower level.

They keep copy of the summary, while the originals are deposited in the Catalonia National Archive.

I will address writen requests to both, because in any case, the authorization must be issued by the Secretary of the Electoral Administration, which will disappear in about 90 days, because their lifecycle is 100 days and the elections to the Parliament took place November the 28th.

Time to run

The long path to the data sources

Since the Department of Adminstració Local couldn't provide me with historical data,  I contacted the President of the Consell Comarcal del Pallars Jussà, Xavier Pont, who commited to contact his party ( CiU), and gave me the phone number of the archives' responsible. Few days later she told me that the Consells Comarcals don't receive the data that I need.

I have contacted the Junta Electoral Central, because it would also be interesting to get the files with the names of elected members of the lists, but they don't store this kind of information, which is created by the Junta Electoral Local. This organism deads 100 days after the elections. The registers produced by the Junta Electoral, containing the details of the counting of votes, are stored by the Audiencia Provincial.

Ok. New options for asking...

A bureaucracy tale

The 15th of November was the date when I went to the Goverment office to ask, officially, for the set of data.

It have registration time: 12:03

Today, Thursday the 18th of November I have called the responsible of the department, to know if the files were already available.

"The form has not yet arrived to my office, following the normal internal process", she said.

Normal means that a paper needs, at least, three days to run ( ! ) from the register office, in the ground level of the building, to an office somewhere in the same building.

Let me take some time to learn about efficiency, high performance and so on

Data ownership, data love, data prevention, data protection

Most of the responsibles to whom I addressed my mails, responded very fast, inviting me to visit their archives, or sending to me pdf's with the information, but one of them informed that the minutes of the offcial meeting were published in the official Journal of the Diputació.

It was following this link that I had to follow the steps of MUNICAT

From there I reached the Servei de Relacions amb les Entitats Locals, wich service manager  told me that they were the owners of the data, and they had historical records, but...

"Do you need all the data ?" she said

Following her request, the 15th of november I had registered an official form asking for the files

Let's wait for some days

to be an investigator

Three days, a long weekend, spent in visiting websites and sending mails to the web administrators, asking for missing information.

Are they going to answer ?

When tomorrow morning they will see my message in their inbox, are they going to react activating the organization in order to send me a quick, well documented answer, or...

Manresa. Well done!

A very good example of maintaining quality information and making it available

When you look at the years were an elections has taken place, there is an mp3 file with the speech of the Major. I advise to listen to the 1979's recorded message.

The minutes of the meetings are hand written

About 1995, summer 95, you can also notice that they move from a typewritting machine to a computer.

Data flyes away

I've contacted with Municat, the organization holding the up-to-date information, but they informed me they they had never taken care of storing the historical data base.

Unbelievable. The effort of getting and sorting all the information about the composition of the governments of 100% of the Catalan Municipalities, lost, that easy. Probably a problem of capacity, but not a hard disk capacity !!

Since this doors is closed, I will go ahead with the one to one contact

The source of the data has been found !

I have been able to become student of the Barcelona University since the 13th of October.

The next step will be to register the Doctoral Dissertation, but meanwhile I was going ahead with my research about the data covering the 70 cities and towns.

The first contacts, by e-mail, absolutely disapointing: no answer at all, so yesterday I was planning to take some holidays in order to be able to pay a visit to some of the cities, to investigate on site

I'm asking to the information services of the municipalities about the seat distribution for each party after the six elections since 1987.

But today, only by coincidence, searching in the internet for the address of the hockey place where my son had to play in the afternoon, I saw in the Wikipedia a link to a catalan organization, belonging to the regional government, holding the data. My data !!!

 I'm ready to call them Monday, early in the morning

Yesterday we agreed to have all the documentation in English, instead of Catalan

next station: end of September

The commitee was not able to take the decission about my request in July, so probably they will check it again end of September.

Meanwhile few tasks to perform, trying to advance a little bit in the investigation:

1. Which towns having more than 20k inhabitants, or being a county capital, had a coalition in the local government since 1.987's elections ?. I made a list of 70

2. Which ones of the above towns have information available in the website, about the history of the responsabilities assumed by the different political parties ?: none.
This means that I will have to contact each one if I want to get the detailed information

The main impact will be that instead of working with figures comming from a database created by someone else, usually the official statistical institute, I'll have to record primary ( raw ) data myself, and the conseqüence is that I have to reserve some holidays for this ( noble ) purpose

Mehr urlaub

Els Encantats i el llac de Sant Maurici

Caminant no aconsegueixo alliberar-me del dia a dia i aïllar-me per gaudir de l'entorn

El cert es que tot desitjant fer un punt i apart, no faig res per posar-lo, i això em deixa davant meu, tot sol, i no em queixo pas

Ara mateix escolto la remor de l'aigua, pel rierol que baixa cap a l'estany, com a únic so que m'envolta, però vaig escrivint per al blog, com si fos a casa, que hi soc

Urlaub machen

Coll de l'Oli, Pallars Jussa
Only one hour walk, looking North

Wait & Wait

Two weeks ago I succeded in delivering the full set of documents to be accepted by the University of Barcelona.
Although I have mentioned, only few days later they noticed that I don't have a degree in Laws. They informed that this is not a blocking issue, but the process for acceptance must be different, having to be approved by the Doctoral Comission. No problem, only a little extra delay

Slow train coming

As Dylan said.

More than 5 months already since my last post. Half a year.

I was very disappointed when noticing that my investigation was impossible due to the lack of data, which was going to be collected ( and managed ) by another investigation team, leaded by Jaume Magre

The truth is that without data to work with, there was no subject, or no theory to demonstrate.

I made another proposal to Dr. Reniu, about the way the memebers of a political coalition act and react during the last year of his mandate, before the elections, but again there was not enough data available for getting into conclussions.

Currrently, what we are going to register as doctoral dissertation is to study the relation, if any, linking a certain ideology, a certain political party with the seats the party gets when being member of a governmental coalition . Do the Green party always gets a seat relating Grass? ( I mean grass, you know, what the cows, some cows, eat ).

If this can be assessed, the next step is how to explain the exceptions. Do the opinion polls modify the preferences of the parties when opting for a seat during the negotiations?

Well, it looks fine to me.

The comming years will be ( more ) exciting dealing with all this matters, aside of the normal life