Editorial: An admin error?

The latest census poll for foreign residents  compiled by the Spanish government shows a drop in the number of non-Spanish residents of 1,000 people in the Balearics. Now, you would have thought that the alarm bells would be ringing across the islands. But don´t worry the decline in the number of residents could be down to an administrative error. In other-words local councils have not been doing their job right and checking to see if residents have moved away or have just “dropped out”of the official council register. In some cases, foreign residents elect to “leave” the official list because they want to disappear off the radar.  So, no-one is too sure how many non-Spaniards actually live in the Balearics, that is why there is such a big difference between the official figures and estimates which are made by other bodies. Legally living in the Baleares there are about 17,000 British residents but they are some people, probably quite rightly, who claim that there are about 50,000 residents. The simple answer is that a sizeable number of British residents do not register with their councils and the same can be said for other nationalities. I would advise all foreigners to register with their council. There are important advantages such as discounted travel to the mainland and on inter-island flights. At the moment no-one can accurately say how many foreigners live on Majorca. And I suspect that this will be a state of affairs which will continue.