The mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida, is the municipal councilor with the highest salary, one more year. The perception of him during 2021 far exceeded that of the Prime Minister and the ministers of him. Specifically, he received 108,517.80 euros, more than 7,000 euros per month, a frozen salary, since it was the same amount as in 2020. The Ministry of Finance and Public Function has just updated the information on the remuneration of those responsible for the most of 8,000 municipalities in Spain. At the top of the table, Catalan and Basque corporations stand out.
Below Madrid, the city council with the highest salary is Barcelona. The council paid Ada Colau 100,000.04 last year, although since she came to the municipal government she limits that remuneration to 3,191 euros net per month, renouncing the allowances and donating the rest to social projects. The podium is completed by Bilbao. Its mayor, Juan Mari Aburto, raised his salary in 2021 to receive a total of 98,018.40 euros.
The salary of the aldermen of the other two Basque capitals also exceeds that of the members of the council of ministers. In this way, Gorka Urtaran, mayor of Vitoria, received 91,323.33 euros last year, while Eneko Goia, from San Sebastián, received 88,743.59 euros. Not far behind them is the mayor of Seville, then Juan Espadas, with 88,673 euros; the one from Valladolid, Óscar Puente, with an annual salary of 87,595.62 euros and the one from Valencia, Joan Ribó, with 87,137.82 euros.
All these mayors received during the year 2021, the year of the pandemic, a higher salary than that of the President of the Government, which, as reflected in the Official State Gazette (BOE), was 84,845 euros. A frozen amount from the previous year thanks to an amendment in the budgets. The mayors who charge similarly to Pedro Sánchez are those of Almería, with 83,376.86 euros; from Getxo, with 83,985.57 euros; and from the Tenerife town of Arona, with 83,054.37. Similar salaries are reproduced in Malaga, whose alderman received 82,314.82 euros; in Zaragoza, with a salary for its maximum manager of 81,388.72 euros.
One step below are the municipalities of Alicante, with a salary for their mayor of 73,564.76 euros; from Tarragona, with 73,444.56 euros; from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 71,400 euros; and Gijón, with 70,073.51 euros.
Other Catalan municipalities whose mayors receive high salaries are those of Terrasa, with 76,006.02 euros; from El Prat de Llobregat, with 70,750.82 euros; from Lleida, with 69,252.53 euros; Sant Andreu de la Barca, with 68,536.75 euros; and from Sabadell, with 67,114.18 euros.
On the opposite side, in the lower part of the table as far as the provincial capitals are concerned, there are councilors such as that of Girona, which received 38,902.92 euros in 2021; that of Zamora, with 36,108.00 euros; those of Oviedo and Teruel, who do not have dedication, and who received 22,200 and 14,956.44 euros, respectively. And the one from Cádiz, José María González, Kichi, in the red lantern of big cities, with an iconic salary of 1,669.15 euros.
All this data provided by the Ministry of Finance comes from the ISPA system, the Information System for Administration Posts, the platform for collecting information on the perceptions of elected officials and the remuneration assigned to the jobs of government officials. city councils, regional and provincial councils and island councils and councils, as well as autonomous communities. The consistories of the Comunidad Foral de Navarra are not included in the document as they are pending implementation of the system.
