Small municipality, big (urban) hell

Abstract

The present work, in addition to focusing on analyzing the critical and
inconsistent relationship between urban planning and undermunicipalism, is
intended to be more than an appeal, a desperate cry for the different public
powers, specifically, both state and regional legislative powers, legislate in accordance
with the municipal reality that occurs in each of the various Autonomous
Communities, and, therefore, in accordance with the means and capacities
of the small municipalities located in them, thus generating, unlike the
existing one, an urbanism that, when adapted to reality, is truly applicable and,
therefore, effective and efficient, in each and every one of them. Something
so simple, logical, and above all, coherent, such as legislating differently for
those who, for multiple reasons, far from being the same, are radically different
in practically everything, even in its very conception and purpose, as is
undeniable between large and medium-sized municipalities, on the one hand,
and small municipalities, on the other, it has been systematically ignored, if
not postponed, by the various legislators of the respective Autonomous Communities,
which denotes the lack of sensitivity that they have shown and show
in relation to such type or class of municipalities.
Everything pointed out in the preceding paragraph must be qualified somehow,
given that some regional legislators are more sensitive with respect to

the situation that occurs in small municipalities that are located within their
respective territorial scope. In this regard, I must point out that in some Autonomous
Communities that have approved recent Urban Laws, there is a certain
sensitivity towards such municipalities, given the lack of human, economic
and technical resources that characterize them. In some other Autonomous
Communities with older Town Planning Laws, such concern is also found, although
the truth is that in some Autonomous Communities as well as in other
Autonomous Communities, said concern is just superficial, materializing in
simple signs that in no way truly address the problem and even less, stop it,
contributing in this way to its perpetuation.
In order to draw attention to such an unfair and dramatic situation and
by de way criticize it without any kind of ambiguity, I wanted to put a title to
this work that, at the same time as suggestive, shows clearly and incontrovertibly
the great and unfair urban problematic to which that small municipalities
have to face in the face of the constant apathy and abandonment of functions
that the regional legislators display in relation to this issue. For this, and
taking advantage of the always wise Spanish proverb, and within it, the proverb
that reads: «Small municipality, big hell», I have qualified the noun «hell»
adding after it, in parentheses, the adjective «urban», with the purpose of
emphasizing that with the current urban legislation, this is precisely what the
latter are condemned to: to be an urban hell.