The Ministry of Industry and Tourism is in talks with the Ministry of the Interior for one of the effects of the call for general elections on July 23, and it is the fact that people who already have a hotel reservation or a paid ticket can claim it. in case of being called to form part of a polling station.
“The casuistry is very wide and we are in talks with the Interior, who is the one who leads the organization in this very short term, in case it can be raised with the Electoral Board,” said the Minister of Industry, Héctor Gómez, this morning in a breakfast in which he presented the data on tourist arrivals in the first four-month period of the year. “All possibilities are considered,” he insisted.
The general elections on July 23 will be held in the middle of the tourist season and, in addition, a bridge in several communities since Santiago the Apostle is celebrated on July 25. Last year the Ministry of Industry recorded with data from the INE about 19 million trips by Spaniards during the month of July, 1.8 million of them went abroad. Gómez has not specified which formulas can be studied by the Electoral Board but the difference between trips and reservations in national territory is evident, as is the case of the majority of Spaniards who go on vacation in July, and trips to the foreign.
On the other hand, the minister has indicated that he does not expect a relevant alteration of tourist reservations to take place due to the fact of the electoral appointment, since in regional electoral calls held on these dates there has not been a significant decrease in participation.
The draw to be part of the polling stations in these elections will take place between Saturday June 24 and Wednesday June 28. Once the members of the tables have been chosen, the interested parties will receive the notification at their homes within a period of three days. Among the exemptions that the Electoral Board considers to participate in the table is the attendance on the day of the election of relevant family events (up to the second degree of consanguinity) that cannot be postponed or in which the postponement causes significant economic damages. But not tourist reservations for vacations.
Gómez also recalled that there are tools that guarantee participation, such as voting by mail, which this year will foreseeably rise above normal since the 23-J is the first call to take place in the middle of summer, although it does that occurred at the beginning, in the month of June. In fact, seven weeks after the appointment, the Post Office has already received these days the first requests to vote remotely, in a higher proportion than usual. Only the census abroad exceeds two million voters, to which should be added the more than 1.5 million who voted by mail in previous elections. In certain territories such as Asturias or Galicia, voting by mail represents almost 30% of the electorate.
In any case, the Government has reiterated that it does not expect the event to alter the tourist season, which is on track to exceed the pre-pandemic data in the number of foreign visitors and break another record with between 52 and 54 million visitors between May and October. In terms of income, it will undoubtedly be the campaign with the highest volume in the history of this industry in Spain, since in the first four months there has been spending by visitors of 25,681 million euros, 20% more than before the pandemic. This invoice obviously includes the effect of inflation and the sharp rises in prices for both airline tickets and hotel rooms.
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