Elections prompt a trebling of government announcements

From April 3 there can be no more "propaganda"

President Armengol at the presentation of a solar park project on Thursday. | MDB

Andrew EdePalma19/03/2023 09:18

On April 3, President Armengol will sign the decree calling the regional and island council elections. As for municipal elections, the Spanish government issues the decree. And as from the third of April, there can be no more announcements of projects that could be construed to be election propaganda; the elections are on May 28.

The imminence of signing the decrees and of the elections helps to explain why there has been a recent flurry of announcements. The government has typically made six announcements per day on its website. These have gone up to fifteen or twenty. On Friday last week there were seventeen.

This activity hasn't been confined to the government. The Council of Mallorca and Palma town hall have also been making frequent announcements. And so, whether it has been, for example, work starting on a new social housing project, a new school for Sa Pobla, or the arrival of hydrogen buses in Palma, there is at least an element of the elections about them.

This has of course always tended to be the case, and there have been examples of breaching the rules in the past. In May 2007 and a few days before the elections, Jaume Matas, the then president of the Balearics for the Partido Popular, announced that there was going to be an opera house in the bay of Palma. The PP lost the election for the Balearic parliament.