Sommerferien wieder

Again,

A luxury of our First World way of living: yearly holidays.

This time in the South of France. National Parc of Cèvennes.

Time for hiking, and noticing that I can't follow my son's speed anymore

Tarragona, nice but the disaster has been announced

I wanted to work 1979 and 1983 elections.

I have got registers enough from 1987 and ahead.

For a Municipality it is not compulsory to inform about the name of the Mayor and the Councilors to the Official Gazzette, but since 1987 they are used to do it.

No single one did it in 1979 nor in 1983.

Back home with empty papers

Well, I had to invest a lot of time reading each single page, because I couldn't believe the fact that no one was there.

In 1983, the loans were given with an interest rate of 16 % !

What a pitty.

I don't know how, but I must talk to a Secretary of a Municipality, of a certain age, to know where this  information was stored.

Bye Tarragona.

Fun in Tarragona

I'm working with the documents relating the province of Tarragona for the elctions 1987, 1991 and 1995.

This is people making fun of their political task.

Can you imagine yourself being the Counselor for slaughterhouses and cemetery ? Mr. Pere Pi Ferrer did it in 1995 in Falset.

What about being the Couselor for PA ( Megafonia in catalan )  ?  Mr. Jordi Borràs Ollé succeded in 1995 in Móra d'Ebre.

Doing nothing ?

Not at all

I can read the Official Gazzette from the provinces of Lleida and Girona, all in their accessible public data bases. So it is only a matter of time, because I have to read, one by one, each issue of the months of June till December each election year.

Barcelona tracking depends on my possibilities for visting the library. Same for Tarragona. The difference is that one month of Barcelona need three books of 128 pages each, plus some addenda, while a month of Tarragona only needs one book of 68 pages. This means that the speed for reading is much higher.

The Tarragona's library is open from 8 till 15h, while in Barcelona only from 10 till 14h. The result is that I need more than one working day for one election year in Barcelona, while in one day I can get all the records for three election years.

This is only a matter of time.

This is only a boring task.

This is only a summer job for a young student like me


"Tarragona m'esborrona"

SNA people

I'm facing the responsibility of creating a new acronym

SNA stands for "Say NO, attitude", and it refers to the people not loving what they do.

Ugly people, in general, because their emotional attitude is physiologically replicated. They are punished living their lives.

I have a nice white list, but also a long black list of SNA's. The good thing is that they are a multitude, but they don't succeed to turn the world in black

Who is the Devil of the offical documents?

The answer is: The Secretary of the Municipality

This is an official position occupied by lawyers, responsible for the legal quality of the agreements and decissions issued by the Municipality.


But.... what I'm noticing, reading the documents that they send to the official gazzette, is that the level of creativity is very ( too ) high, in the sense that the same protocol ( i.e.: the entitlement of the elected members to replace the Major when being absent ), becomes a possibility for creating mess:

- If one decides to define the substitute number 1, 2, 3.., the other assigns the substitute number 1, while numbers 2 and 3 are names, simply "substitutes"

- If one defines the areas of responsibility, and later assigns an elected members to each area, the other prefers to assign persons to the areas, and only then give the details about the content of the area.


There is no a single act that can be compared from one Municipality to another one.

But, I'm afraid that the worst is still to come:

This morning I have been in the library of the historical archive, searching the remaining information of 1995, and starting to work 1991. The structure of the public documents, is different again, with a rather complicated structure.

(I'm doing it only for pleasure, not for fun, but I can adapt my goals if necessary !!)

The work load for the comming months. A boring tale

I already have 1021 records in an EXCEL sheet.

This is covering three elections ( 1999, 2003 and 2007 ) for 21 cities.

Taking into consideration that I need data for 130 cities, related to a total of 8 elections, I can expect the work to be finalized when reaching the level of 16.000 records.

Can you believe it?
One by one....

The steps are the following for the last three elections, which information is on-line:

1- Read the session after the election, where the Major of the city entitles to some elected to become responsibles for a certain area ( Health, Sports, Economy.. )
Write the name of the elected in the spreadsheet, male o female, and area of responsibility
2- Read the electoral list, published some weeks before the election, to know the party to which each candidate belongs.


When the document is not on-line I must visit the Historical Archive of the offical gazzette, in Barcelona, opening hours from 10 till 14 . I must read each single page, scanning for the cities and documents that I need.  To cover the maximum possibilities of getting such information, I use to read four months of the archived documents, In total I expect to invest from 6 to 10 complete days