These are the city councils in Spain that have not made public the salaries of their mayors
In Spain There are 8,131 municipalities, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE)and each of them has the duty to remit the salaries of their mayors to the Government year after year. These data are made public on the Administration Position Salary Information portal (ISPA). The mayors of Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona, with salaries that exceed 100,000 euros per year.
It is not surprising that the person at the top of the list is none other than José Luis Martínez-Almeida. The man from Madrid bills an amount greater than 110,000 euros per year. But, unfortunately, not all of them are paid, according to the Ministry of Public Function, one in three councilors does not receive financial compensation for their work as mayor and many other town councils have decided not to make this information public without clearly clarifying the reason.
City councils that did not publish the salaries of their mayors
City councils are obliged by law to submit salary information annually of administration positions, including that of the mayor. This obligation derives from the Law of Transparency, Access to Public Information and Good Government. However, no sanctions are established for town councils that do not comply with the intention to inform. Hence why so many town councils rule out making the data public.
It is worth mentioning that, on the one hand, mayors can choose to renounce exclusive dedication and, therefore, not receive a salary or only collect per diems. In contrast, the law establishes maximum limits for salaries of the mayors according to the number of inhabitants of the municipality, thus ensuring efficiency in public spending, and even so, town councils such as Parla (Madrid), Ourense or Talavera de la Reina (Toledo), the three with more than 100,000 inhabitants have chosen not to share salary information.
How many municipalities have not shared the information?
The data published last Tuesday by the Ministry includes more than 1,200 unavailable salaries. Among them that of Gonzalo Pérez Jácome, mayor of Ourense. His salary was public last year (75,215.42 euros for 2023), which placed him as the second highest paid mayor of Galicia, only surpassed by Abel Caballero in Vigo.
