The mayor of Matilla de Arzón (Zamora), Consuelo Morán, a teacher without political experience until three years ago, is the councilor in Spain that received the least economic perception in the last year, six euros, although she is in favor of this municipal office charging a minimum salary.
Morán, who professionally is a professor at the University of León and who belongs to Ciudadanos, has stood out in the Salary Information of Administration Positions made public this week for being the one that less has received from the municipal coffers, excluding mayors who leave “at zero cost”.
In an interview, he explains that the position he occupies should be “a little paid” in all the town councils of Spain, with a “basic, not high” salary that could range between 400 and 500 euros per month. In his opinion, this would be an incentive to encourage more people to run for office and thus more competent people would be elected as mayors, which would lead to better management.
“Nobody here wants to appear because only enemies are made,” she declared to justify a pay for mayors that she does not even charge because teaching in Labor Sciences at the University of León gives her to live.
In his opinion, although the budget is scarce in small municipalities like his, which has 170 registered inhabitants, if the economic management is good, money can be obtained for that minimum payment and at the same time make investments and improvements in the town. In his case, he has assured that in the three years that he has been in office, he has gone from savings in the public coffers of 70,000 euros at the beginning of the mandate to 105,000 currently, “and even so many things have been done,” he says.
Regarding her remuneration as councilor, she has clarified that the six euros is the money that each councilor charges for each plenary session that attends and that last year there were seven or eight plenary sessions, although the councilors of her group donated the amounts received to the acquisition of trees to enable a green area in the town. For this reason, she has not been able to specify if the remuneration of six euros that is attributed to her as mayor responds to a confusion with the money that is charged for each plenary session or is the amount of the last plenary session that she attended because the money from the others had already been donated.
For the mayor of Matilla de Arzón, an alderman is “from the heart of the people” and if the municipality is to function well, it must dedicate at least two working days a week to it.
Consuelo Morán regrets the depopulation of rural municipalities in Spain and considers it key for the survival of the towns that they are endowed with “the same services and access facilities”, with a level of roads and paved streets similar to that of a town.
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