The mayor of La Línea de la Concepción, Juan Franco, will not be able to hold a popular consultation to find out if his neighbors agree with the city becoming an autonomous community, a formula with which the mayor believes that many of the problems could be solved. problems plaguing the city. But he won't be able to do it, at least for now.
And today the Supreme Court has ruled against the petition raised by the leader of the La Línea 100x100 party, adding another rejection to those it already has to its credit. First, the Junta de Andalucía ruled against this split and then it was the Government Council that denied the request in October 2022.
After this judicial setback, sources from the Linense town council have told this newspaper that the resolution by the TS is being studied by the legal services in order to assess whether it is appropriate to appeal the sentence and continue in the effort to ask their neighbors about this affair.
The question of a possible reconversion of the city is nothing new for its inhabitants. Franco already had this proposal in his electoral program in 2019 and ended up becoming the most voted force then, obtaining 21 of the 25 councilors that make up the local government. The results of the 2023 elections catapulted him to the top and he became the mayor with the most votes in Spain. He won one more councilor with policies very close to the needs of the street, policies that, as he himself has described on some occasion, are put in place by a party “without ideology.”
His objective, as he stated in an interview given to this newspaper when the consultation was still a viable option, is to put an end to “this devilish situation that only exists here”, a place whose problems are “ignored” by the competent administrations and that “ "They exceed the competence of a normal municipality." La Línea, south of the south and on the border with Gibraltar, with all that that entails, has more than 5,000 inhabitants, a chronic unemployment rate of around 30%, a high rate of school failure, a “deficient” health service and major infrastructure problems. Added to all this is the great scourge of the area: drug trafficking and the social problems derived from it.
For Franco, converting the city into an autonomous community with a special tax regime was the closest thing to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, since it would acquire greater competence and they could manage these difficulties in another way. But the Supreme Court has shot down his proposal and, with it, the possibility of building the future that his team had in mind in this territory.
It was in March 2022 when the Plenary gave the green light to raise the request for consultation. The question they would ask their neighbors would be the following: “Do you think it is appropriate for the City Council of La Línea de la Concepción to submit a petition to the Government of the Nation and the Cortes Generales to urge the conversion of the municipality into an autonomous community in accordance with the art. 144 a) of the Spanish Constitution?” All votes were in favor, except for two abstentions. And, from there, the journey of the now failed proposal began.
Taking advantage of the 'national interest' reflected in said article, it was intended to change the current legal-administrative formula and, therefore, carry out the change. The motion was registered with the Junta de Andalucía on March 16, which in turn sent it by email to the General Directorate of Autonomous and Local Legal Regime of the Ministry of Territorial Administration on April 12, 2022.
It was in September, after three months had passed without a response, when the mayor considered that "the regime of silence is positive in this case", something that was not considered in the same way by the Council of Ministers, an entity that would also reject the possibility to question the people of La Lina about this purpose in October of the same year.
The Government's argument to challenge the proposal, as reflected in the TS ruling consulted by this newspaper, is that the consultation “exceeded what was provided for by article 71 of Law 7/1985, regulating the bases of the Local Regime.” . This point states that “in accordance with the legislation and of the Autonomous Community, when it has statutorily attributed competence to do so, the Mayors, with prior agreement by an absolute majority of the Plenary Session and authorization of the Government of the Nation, may submit those matters to popular consultation. of the municipal and local jurisdiction that are of special relevance to the interests of the neighbors, with the exception of those related to the local Treasury.” For the State, this matter falls outside of merely municipal powers.
The Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the TS has ruled along this same line, insisting that “erecting a municipality into an Autonomous Community directly affects the state and autonomous community order, since it affects the territorial organization of the State, alters the territorial composition of the Autonomous Community, in this case that of Andalusia and, therefore, to its Statute of Autonomy, and is outside the municipal jurisdiction."
Likewise, the Supreme Court includes in its ruling a ruling from the Constitutional Court that defends that the Andalusian Statute establishes that the territory of Andalusia “includes that of the municipalities of the provinces of Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga and Seville. Therefore, converting the municipality of La Línea de la Concepción into an Autonomous Community deprives the Autonomous Community of a part of its territory.”
Furthermore, the court affirms that "the municipal corporation has attempted to obtain, through a means that is not conceived for the purpose to which it aspires, a response contrary to the legal system" and insists that the "use" that the city council has made of the article 71 “absolutely denatures the procedure and prevents giving the treatment that is given to those requests that do fall within the framework that the law assigns to local popular consultations and, in particular, together with the procedural singularity, prevents positive silence from playing ”.
After this last refusal, it remains to be seen if the team led by Franco and the municipal legal services finally give up and abandon their objective or if, on the contrary, they appeal the ruling and insist on the need to become "in the general interest" a independent autonomous community of which the territory of the Line is now part.
