Bridging the distance that separates them from the Peninsula aboard a ship and 16 kilometers more on the road to the Urbanova electoral college is the journey that the little more than 70 residents registered in Tabarca, the smallest inhabited island in Spain, will have to face this Sunday. Spain, to exercise their right to vote in the May 28 elections.
With an area of 0.3 square kilometers and almost 2.5 nautical miles from Santa Pola, the inhabitants of Tabarca will be among the voters who will have to invest the most time to get to the polls since they do not have a polling station on the islet and must go to to the Urbanova neighborhood because they belong to the municipality of Alicante.
The president of the Isla Plana de Tabarca neighborhood association, Carmen Martí, has told EFE that the island still lacks a regular shipping line with the mainland and that on May 28 no special transport is available because what many of the Tabarquinos go "practically", vote by mail, while others "find themselves a life as they can" to go to Urbanova.
During the first democratic elections, ballot boxes were placed in the fishermen's association, but the residents themselves asked to vote on the Peninsula because there are few registered voters and they wanted to avoid knowing "who voted for what", which now forces them to invest between 20 and 30 minutes by boat before spending a minimum of another half hour to reach Urbanova either by car, taxi or bus.
In Tabarca, there is no memory of any rally, party act or even that posters of the candidates have been placed, "and they are not missing," according to the secretary of the neighborhood association, Ana Valera, who believes that if someone If he did so now, he would be looked down upon "because everyone would know that he only came to get the vote."
"Politicians have come but electoral campaign events are not remembered," said this neighbor who has a souvenir shop on the island, who explained that the absence of regular transportation makes it difficult, among other things, for minors to live in Tabarca being an inconvenience to go to school every morning.
The Ministry of Territorial Policy, Public Works and Mobility of the Generalitat has put out to tender a public connection service by boat for three daily journeys in each direction throughout the year with the closest geographical port, Santa Pola, although there is no date yet clear start.
The island is located in a privileged enclave of crystalline waters within the oldest marine reserve in Spain, dating from 1986, with the presence of half the species of flora and fauna in the Mediterranean (about 7,000) in 1,400 submerged hectares, many of them of posidonia oceanica meadows.
