Madrid - Government

Government

See also: List of mayors of Madrid

The City Council consists of 57 members, one of them being the Mayor, currently Ana Botella. The Mayor presides over the Council.

The Plenary of the Council, is the body of political representation of the citizens in the municipal government. Some of its attributions are: fiscal matters, the election and deposition of the Mayor, the approval and modification of decrees and regulations, the approval of budgets, the agreements related to the limits and alteration of the municipal term, the services management, the participation in supramunicipal organizations, etc. Nowadays, mayoral team consists of the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor and 8 Delegates; all of them form The Board of Delegates (the Municipal Executive Committee).

Madrid has tended to be a stronghold of the People's Party, which has controlled the city's mayoralty since 1989. In the 2007 regional and local elections, the conservative People's Party (PP, right-wing political party) obtained 34 seats, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE, centre-left political party) obtained 18 and United Left (IU, left political party) obtained 5.

Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón Jiménez has been in office since 2003, when he left the Presidency of the Autonomous Community of Madrid and stood as the candidate to replace outgoing mayor José María Álvarez del Manzano, also from the PP. In the last local elections of 2007, Ruiz-Gallardón increased the PP majority in the City Council to 34 seats out of 57, taking 55.5% of the popular vote and winning in all but two districts.

Read more about this topic:  Madrid

Famous quotes containing the word government:

    We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms.... Only in superstition is there hope. If you want to become a friend of civilization, then become an enemy of the truth and a fanatic for harmless balderdash.
    Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)

    The United States is the only great nation whose government is operated without a budget. The fact is to be the more striking when it is considered that budgets and budget procedures are the outgrowth of democratic doctrines and have an important part in developing the modern constitutional rights.... The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    I do love this people [the French] with all my heart, and think that with a better religion and a better form of government and their present governors their condition and country would be most enviable.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)