Demographic and Democratic Change

Earlier this month forty-one candidates were elected to Barcelona City Council. All were born in Spain. Forty were born in Catalonia. Thirty-five were born in the city itself. That is, forty out of forty-one hail from the city or its hinterland: one is from further afield, a Spanish-speaking town just under three hundred kilometres away, though she moved to the city when she was six.

How well do these forty-one elected officials reflect the city as a human community? Are our representatives representative? How much do they have in common with the city they govern? Age, sex, ethnicity, and origin are givens: we cannot change when we were born, or where, or whose children we are, or the culture in which we were raised. If people with whom we share any of these traits seem to be left out of the political process, we may perceive the slight as exclusion, though ostensibly the product of a free and open process. Electoral quotas have accordingly addressed the under-representation of women in the democratic institutions of dozens of countries (for which, see http://www.quotaproject.org/index.cfm). Whether or not one agrees with obligatory quotas as a measure, the principle that representative democracy loses its legitimacy as citizens lose their faith, or belief, in the process is not abstract: it is socially palpable, camped out in city squares all over Spain. Rather than addressing those outraged by politics in 2011, I want to consider who might feel excluded, and outraged, in 2021, or 2031.

As of January 2011 278,320 city residents did not hold Spanish nationality. They account for just over 17% of the population. Not all newcomers are non-nationals, as longer-term foreign residents--the present writer among them--become citizens of Spain and those drop off that particular statistical map. About 22% of the city's population was not born in Spain, of whom a few were born to a Spanish parent or Spanish parents residing abroad. Let's say, then, that 20% of the city's population is made up of newcomers, and a growing but as of yet unknown percentage of the children of those newcomers, some of whom will have acquired Spanish citizenship at birth (if one of their parents had become a citizen beforehand), and some of whom are born foreign. As of 2009, about 20% of those born in the city were not citizens; another 14% was the child of one Spanish and one non-Spanish parent.

Rounding up to include immigrants who are now citizens, the city's first and second generation immigrant population is likely around a quarter of the total. Another 7% was born elsewhere in Catalonia and 20% in the rest of Spain. Among the 51% born in the city, there must now be a considerable number born to immigrant parents. Yet 85% of city councillors are native to the city, and 97.5% native-born Catalans. Newcomers are not represented; and as they are not, one fifth of the city is not. (There are a handful of newcomers among the city's 170+ unelected district councillors, as a handful appeared on the lists of one of the main party's in this month's election--far enough down the list to make their candidacy political fiction.)

The phenomenon is recent. The boom in immigrant numbers came between 2001 and 2006. Two political responses to this tectonic shift in Catalan demographics are available to influence public opinion. One consists quite literally of cooking shows on Catalan television: Karakia on TV3, Els nous catalans on TVE's Catalan service. (The Spanish-language service broadcasts Babel, similar in content and format.) The gesture may be welcoming and the stance dialogic, but one fact narrates another, the old population gracefully talks about the new. At the other extreme, Josep Anglada and his fellow travellers are openly racist, xenophobic, and popular enough to garner 67,000 votes. Do cooking shows counter Anglada? Well-intentioned multi-culturalism can never substitute for the beginnings of demographic parity in democratic institutions. If Mr Anglada is to be matched point for point, the best person to do so is one of the very newcomers he loathes.