Government and Politics: Presidents Galore!

As in the United Kingdom, the Monarch formally appoints the leader of the government for a four year term.  The President or Prime Minister selects his cabinet of Ministers from members of the Cortes, or Parliament.   And, as with Parliament’s Houses of Lords and Commons, the Cortes has Senators and Deputies. 

The next tier down the democratic ladder towards Tenerife is the Canarian regional government, the Gobierno Autonomo de Canarias. Like Scotland, the islands have their own Parliament, elected every four years.  It is modelled on the lower house of the Cortes, with a president at its head.  The Canaries form one of the seventeen autonomous regions in Spain and each has its own President, High Court and Parliament.

The constitution is typically fuzzy about the extent that a region is self governing, and makes provision for regions to adopt greater autonomy.  Central government is responsible for law and order, international affairs, airports, shipping and several other areas.  In the Canaries, the central Government is represented by a delegate who is a political appointee.  Although the centre does have a degree of control over communities as much of their income comes from it, the regional governments decide how they will spend the money. 

The seven Canary Islands constitute two provinces.  Las Palmas is the Provincial Capital of the eastern islands of Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote and Santa Cruz is the capital of the western islands of Tenerife, La Gomera, El Hierro and La Palma.  Each of these islands is run by a Cabildo with yet another President at its helm.  And they also have a considerable budget to spend.  The closest equivalent to an Insular Government would be a county council, although this may be slightly misleading as a Cabildo has more autonomy and responsibilities.

One of the biggest differences between the Spanish system of Government and those of our native lands is that much more power has been devolved to local areas.  In this way, the system puts much more of the decision making and budget spending responsibility to the lower rungs of the hierarchy, allowing more flexibility for areas to decide what is best for them.  The side effect of this is that the borders between one level of government and the other are blurred, and that each level jostles for a bigger slice of the decision making cake.

In reality, many Spanish people are just as befuddled by this as we are.  Often it seems that the borders overlap, especially when it comes to paperwork.  There are many examples of having to submit forms with similar information to two different bodies and horror stories of serpent like queues that are already long before the sun rises.
 

Useful links about government in Tenerife

Gobierno de España: links to all ministries 

Gobierno de Canarias

Cabildo de Tenerife 

Official Spanish Government news in English