When I arrived in Santa Maria de l'Avall a few years ago, my vision of the public service obligation that City Councils have was diametrically opposed to what I sensed among my new neighbors.
Over time I have understood that, by force of —unlike the inhabitants of Corbera Alta and Baja— paying out of their own pockets for every service, every improvement, every maintenance, and every work, we have accepted living in a status of self-management. We have become accustomed to an autonomous neighborhood, separated from the vital heartbeat of the town, where often the only relationship with the Corbera institutions is the IBI receipt. The City Council is a distant entity, with a single purpose: collection.
We live today in a perverse system where the City Council only communicates with the Board of Delegates, which is a purely administrative entity that represents properties and not people. As we have seen over the years, it is an oligarchic system, where whoever has more properties has more influence and power, and can approve projects considering more the economic benefit (converting plots into land suitable for construction) than the personal or coexistence benefit.
The example is this Board of Delegates that spits in our faces a “you won’t stop this,” protected by votes of doubtful credibility, where 76 owners attending the last meeting decide the future of all the inhabitants of Santa Maria (including those who, at this point, have not found out that they will have to pay more than €30,000 —plus interior works— for a work that no Law obliges us to do).
An oligarchy that today, during the period in which we are a Compensation Board, has enormous decision-making capacity, but when all the estates are sold, they will be just another neighbor. Or maybe they won't even be neighbors: maybe they will just decide our future, sell everything, and leave Santa Maria.
In a Compensation Board, the City Council is the guardianship entity. Therefore, I cannot stop asking myself for what reason Mayor Boladeras allows the Board of Delegates to approve this work —which has already been seen to have very high cost overruns in some items— and which will leave the neighbors in a situation of legal defenselessness against the successful bidders.
When the sewerage was done in Can Rigol, the City Council was the legal guarantor of the operation. The neighbors paid for the work, but it was the Corbera City Council that supervised the project, visaed it, and tendered the work as a public work, guaranteeing compliance with the contract by the construction company. The City Council was, truly, a guardianship entity.
In Santa Maria, it has not occurred to us to ask for this protection. And the City Council —turning a blind eye— has not offered it. This Board of Delegates suits the PSC very well: they ask for nothing, they cause no problems, they don't make them work.
These days I have been thinking that, if we have a City Council that does not represent us, how many votes would it take to put another group in charge of the City Council in the 2027 Elections? And I was surprised: the PSC has 8 councilors, which it has achieved with 2,026 votes... which is about 1,300 votes more than the second political force. Not many. It is another oligarchy.
Two oligarchies communicating with each other. Ignoring the neighbors.
Now it is more important than ever to make all Santa Maria owners understand what is at stake in the next Meeting and the need to come and exercise the vote. Here every square meter gives you the power to tip the balance towards the side of justice.
But it is also more important than ever to be aware that we have another strength: we have in every house in every urbanization of Corbera an average of 3 electoral votes that, concentrated in a single political force, would tip the balance towards the path of a new Government in the City Council that is not complicit with any oligarchy. That speaks to the neighbors face to face and listens to them.
100 votes for 15 urbanizations (the unreceived ones) are 3,000 votes. No joke. Let's think about it.
Jorge Marín
Santa Maria de l'Avall, November 18, 2025