All change - municipal elections 2015
Municipal elections took place all across Spain last Sunday and, after four years of what can most kindly be described as an almost total absence of government, Alcalá has a new mayor and a new team in charge of running the town. The unholy alliance between right and left , the Partido Popular (PP) and the Izquierda Unida (IU), has been consigned to history and the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) took ten of the 13 seats available, their biggest majority since 1983, leaving the PP with two and the IU with just one. The turnout was almost 70%, more than double the average for a local election in the UK. The new alcalde, 35-year-old Javier Pizarro Ruiz, is not new to the Ayuntamiento, having been a councillor in the previous administration. He was born and bred in Alcalá, and is related to half the town. He trained in environmental, countryside and forest management but politics is in his blood. His father is Luis Pizarro , a leading ...