The term has become so popular that even the RAE already collects it. «Cunero: it is the stranger to the district said of a candidate or deputy to Cortes». Others call them ‘paratroopers’. The registration of Macarena Olona in the Granada municipality of Salobreña and the political and legal dust raised by this matter has reopened a debate almost as old as Spanish democracy: Is it lawful for a candidate with no roots in the territory to run for elections in that constituency?
The Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime does not require those eligible to have any connection with the territory. In local, general or European elections, it is enough for the eligible person to present his/her candidacy in a timely manner. The same does not happen in regional elections. The legislations of the communities, with different formulations, do force the candidate to have a neighborhood relationship or link with the autonomy. A link that, in practice, translates exclusively into registration in a municipality in the region.
Olona was registered on November 5 in a house in Salobreña owned by the leader of Vox in Granada, Manuel Martín Montero. After Martín himself recognized that the deputy did not usually reside in the town of the Tropical Coast of Granada, last week the City Council suspended her registration after an express investigation in which it was established that the politician from Alicante, indeed, did not live in that Granada coastal town.
The Andaluces Levantaos candidacy denounced what it considers to be a trap before the Provincial Electoral Board, which on May 23 determined that the registration of Macarena “is a firm administrative act, as is its inclusion in the lists of the current electoral census” and that Vox’s policy could not be “retroactively” deprived of the right to passive and active suffrage.
There have been dozens of nursery deputies and ‘parachute’ representatives, but there are two very controversial antecedents. Toni Cantó, after passing through UPyD and Ciudadanos, became part of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s list for the 2021 regional elections. But the actor was left out of the elections because he registered at the end of March in Madrid and the law requires that to form part of the lists of the Community it is necessary to be registered before January 1 of the electoral year.
Javier Maroto (PP), failing to obtain a seat for Álava in the 2019 general elections, registered in the Segovian town of Sotosalbos, with which he had absolutely no links, in order to be appointed senator by designation for Castilla y León, a community with whom he had no relationship. The only requirement to be a representative in the upper house is to be registered in the community.
None of the experts consulted believes that a legal reform is imperative to put an end to the nurseries. There is unanimity: “If a party opts for a non-local candidacy, outside the constituency, it will be the voters who decide, with their vote, whether or not that person represents their interests,” says the Deusto María Political Science professor Wild. Juan Montabes, professor at the University of Granada, has a very similar opinion. “In the general elections, when a deputy is elected by a constituency, he goes on to represent all of Spain and not his territory, with which the nursery ‘disappears’,” remarks the also member of the Central Electoral Board.
«The issue of the nurseries, in fact, is the result of our proportional electoral system, which establishes a prevailing position of the party against the representative of the citizens. Putting an end to this phenomenon would entail an extremely difficult reform due to the current polarization”, adds the professor at the University of Malaga, Ángel Valencia.
«In the Spanish system, the territory loses relevance in favor of the ideology and that allows the space of the ‘paratroopers’. But in systems such as the British one of territorial representation there are also nurseries, ”says the political scientist Lluis Orriols.
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