The Return Of The Jedi: Spain's census

In March the UK will conduct its decennial census. In September Spain will conduct its own. Both are in line with the recommendation of the United Nations that censuses should be undertaken every ten years. The two are, otherwise, different. In the UK the census covers everyone. In Spain it does not. The Spanish census this year will be conducted in a different way to previous ones. In a bid to save money, the Spanish national statistics office (INE) will ask only 10% of the population to answer its questionnaire.

The UN's "bible" for conducting censuses stretches to 442 pages. I got about as far as page 10. One of the key principles is that of "individual enumeration", i.e. capturing information about everyone. How does the Spanish approach conform with this principle?

The statistics office believes that the 10% will give the same sort of information as to what was previously a system of making house-to-house visits, while costing 25% less. It's an ambitious claim when you consider that the statistics office also intends to use electoral roll information.

Censuses are not foolproof. Despite the UK's legal requirement for everyone to fill out a form, people slip through the net, either because they object to the capturing of information or because they don't want to reveal themselves. In Spain it would be hard to put a figure on quite how many might not want their existence to be known or how many would simply fall under the radar because they are neither registered as resident nor registered to vote. And the latest figures for foreigners who have registered to vote in the forthcoming local elections confirm that there is a vast number who, either because of inertia and apathy or for some other reason, are not registered.

The Spanish census will, even without electoral roll information, be a sample. Presumably, the statistics office has some statistical wizardry that will enable it to extrapolate data that will give a complete picture, but you might not be so confident that it does, given the record of some other exercises in statistics, tourism spend for example. Fundamentally though, it is difficult to see how this approach conforms with how a census should be conducted.

Does it matter? Perhaps it doesn't. In terms of core population data, this is pretty much available as it is, birth records adding to the information that is held on everyone through their ID cards or residency and NIE certificates, assuming they have one. Every year a report on population, by municipality, is issued. But population is only part of the census story.

In the 2001 census in the UK and other English-speaking countries, a great practical joke was played on the census compilers enquiring after religious inclination: the fourth-largest religious group in England and Wales was Jedi, as in Jedi Knight. With the emergence of social media to inspire them, what tricks might be played this time round?

The UK census has also captured information on such issues as whether a home has central heating and educational qualifications. The last Spanish census in 2001 wanted to know about matters as diverse as migration, type of home and, of all things, fertility.

The census does, therefore, attempt to try and get to know something about people. It may be no more than a glorified piece of market research, but the government does at least try to compile a picture of everyone, Spanish or non-Spanish. It's more than the political parties do.

Using the electoral roll in the census is doomed to fail the test of creating a Domesday, for the reasons I have noted above. It's far from surprising that there should be a damn great hole when it comes to those registered to vote. Mallorcans themselves, 68% of them, in a survey just released by Gadeso, the research organisation, consider the political situation on the island to be "bad". But being bad isn't a reason for not taking an interest, especially as Mallorcan politics has such high comedic, nay farcical, characteristics.

Apathy towards politics, regardless of whether it is British or Mallorcan, is understandable, but locally the apathy is heightened by a lack of appreciation among expats as to what the parties are and what they stand for and by any efforts by the parties to come to an appreciation of their foreign constituents.

The one and only time I have been "doorstepped" in Mallorca was when the local Partido Popular pitched up at the gate mob-handed. Five of them, grinning like religious zealots on a mission.

They were determined to tell me how good the then-to-be-built motorway extension from Inca was going to be for foreigners. It was a bizarre and somewhat patronising assertion. Though I didn't have much sympathy for the eco-warriors who had camped out to try and prevent the motorway, this opposition was a good enough pretext with which to tell the PP-ers I wouldn't be voting for them. They had made an assumption that, as a foreigner, I would be sympathetic to them.

If the political parties were serious about the foreign vote and if the census might achieve some semblance of electoral-roll completeness, then they should start by saying what they might, or would do for foreign voters. They should start by trying to understand the foreign-voter's motivation. But if they start asking about religion, they'll get one answer. I'm a Jedi.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.