Gitte the Accidental Councillor Torrevieja Socialists promise to tackle your complaints

Having recently reported on your opinions about much of the decline of some areas of Torrevieja, and the complaints about the waste disposal situation in the town, this week, The Leader presented these problems to the opposition political groups to ask what direct action they would take to tackle the problems affecting real lives, rather than, as one reader put it, ìgrandioso projectsî.

As the chance to choose the future lies in your hands, The Leader spoke to the current councillor for International Residents in Torrevieja, Gitte Lund Thomsen, who has helped far too many people to contemplate in the last four years and may no longer be able to carry on in the role, depending how those votes are cast.

As almost an accidental politician, this is her story, in her words.

In 2018 I had some very bad experiences with the town hall in Torrevieja. My son was going to football and the sports centre was falling apart. We had the theatre shut, lots of events cancelled. The May Fair transferred to October, etc.

I thought this could be done better and I realised that Torrevieja had been better before. When I worked as a real estate agent, I was very impressed with Torrevieja. I loved selling houses in Torrevieja, because Torrevieja was a place where you had a certain spirit. Now in the middle of August the beach was closed because of a lack of lifeguards, and businesses were closed. I realised that the change for the bad had entered when the five-party government had taken over. I started going to town hall meetings. I liked the party in opposition, and I liked the leader, Eduardo. Very quickly, through chance, sud- denly I was a councillor.

Eduardo is the experienced politician and then we have a team of people who are specialists in their field. Many of us do not have a political background. We have the headmaster from the school Ciudad del Mar, Ricado Recuero to run education. Then we have the former Olympic handball player Diana Box to run sports. Then we have people who have years of experience working in the town hall. This year we have a new candidate number four on the list Rosa Cañón who is an experienced doctor, and she is brought in to help us get our hospital and health service back on track.

In Spain you vote for a list and not for a person. The councillors enter according to what number on the list they are. Many people have reacted because I have gone from position number 14 to position number 15.

Eduardo has assured me that he is very happy with the work that I am doing in Torrevieja.

To vote at the elections 28th of May they had to declare before 31st of January this year. But it is a good idea to express a wish to vote now. In 2024 they will then have the opportunity to vote for EU-parliament on the 9th of June.

Gitte had much more to say. You can read the full interview on the website, theleader.info ìIt is equally necessary to improve communication: services and advice on various matters must be offered in different languages and the communication channel with the local administration must be facilitated so that residents can convey their opinions, concerns, and suggestions to the local government. Thus, we could work together to address the problems of the municipality and improve the quality of life of citizensî.

Barbara Soler, mayoral candidate for the PSOE, was quick to answer the specific questions put to her, and offer her, and her parties plans to tackle the issues.

The first question was based around actions to directly improve the conditions for those living in the urbanisations. ìMost of the residents live in areas with accessibility, maintenance, security and cleanliness problems. The Socialist Party proposes establishing participatory budgets with projects based on the different residential areas so that the residents themselves decide how to invest in their neighbourhoods. In addition, in all neighbourhoods it is necessary to fix pavements, parks and public spaces. We also want to increase security by creating neighbourhood police officers and providing these areas with basic sports infrastructures, such as calisthenics machines or tracks, and a network of social services and progressively other municipal headquarters outside the city centre. In this way, we would avoid that the citizens of the urbanizations have to travel to do sports or any administrative procedure, taking into account the problem of traffic saturation in the centre and the lack of parkingî.

We also asked about the waste disposal situation, as we have had numerous complaints about dustbins moving far away from where they were, dustbins that are difficult to open for the more frail residents, green waste bins disappearing completely, etc, to which the response was clear, ìThe garbage collection contract must be reviewed since almost 25 million euro are paid per year, a quarter of the entire municipal budget, and everything is still dirty. The change in bins is not conducive to cleanliness and side-loading bins are sometimes too heavy for older people to pedal, so they leave the rubbish outside. It is necessary to take measures aimed at cleaning the entire city urgentlyî. You can read the full interview on theleader.info.