Among the wonders of the party-list electoral systems is the wandering politico, freed from the burdens of rootedness and local representation. Where slates are unknown, candidates with no local connection are said to have parachuted into a race. Parachutes are used when parties want to get someone into elected office and turn to safe seat or district, banking on party loyalty to overcome the candidate's tenuous connection. I doubt the issue is ever decisive, but at least it is an issue.
In Spain, all elections are impersonal, and constituencies ideological rather than local. Thus, in city politics, there are no wards or boroughs: national parties run city-wide slates. The head of the slate is the party's mayoral candidate. In the 1999, the head of the right-of-centre People's Party's slate in the Barcelona election was Santiago Fisas, a former golf champion and local lawyer who had held two successive appointments under the same party in the Spanish government from 1996 to 1999. Fisas ran unsuccessfully for a Barcelona senate seat in 2000; by July 2002 his departure from city politics was leaked. Late in 2003 he reappeared as a regional minister in Madrid, though he had not been and never was elected to the regional assembly and had not resided in Madrid for more than four of his then fifty-five years. He's now a Euro MP in Brussels; he has asked three questions. In Spain, political careers happen first and foremost in parties, not in public.
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