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The village assembly
Alex's talk takes place in a setting that is central to village life in Spain and unlike anything in most English-speaking countries. In very small municipalities, decisions that matter are often discussed in an open meeting of residents before anything formal happens, and in some places this is more than custom. Spanish law keeps an older system, concejo abierto, open council, in which a village is governed by its mayor and an assembly of all its registered voters instead of an elected council; it survives mainly where it is traditional. And in municipalities of fewer than a hundred residents, even those with an ordinary council, the mayor can call the whole village together as an open council to decide a matter of special importance, and must then abide by its decision. More often, though, a mayor of a village of forty will simply call una reunión de vecinos in the salón de actos, the church hall or the school before asking the pleno to vote, because in a place that small, a project nobody has heard of is a project nobody will support. These meetings have their own etiquette. The mayor introduces outsiders and sets the tone, often with a joke at someone's expense, as the Alcaldesa does with Ramiro. Residents interrupt, ask for the floor, and say exactly what they think, in front of the person they are talking about. The vosotros of the room and the usted of an older individual coexist naturally. A visiting expert who reads from slides, speaks in jargon, or treats objections as obstacles will lose the room; one who answers objections in public, names the skeptic and gives him a role, as Alex does, has a chance. Ramiro's verdict, por mí no va a quedar, is the realistic best outcome of such a meeting. Nobody in a village commits enthusiastically to a plan on the first hearing. What you want is for the people who could block it to say they will not.