Maria Agnès Sampol Sabater: "If a mayor is not seen on the street, it seems like he is doing nothing"

PorreresThis past week marked the first 100 days of the Popular Party's mayorship in Porreres in the 21st century. Maria Agnès Sampol Sabater (Porreres, 1986) took the reins of command after the government pact signed with El Pi of Xisca Mora. Sampol was the first time she ran as the head of the list; before, she had been number 3 in the 2015 elections, and number 2 in the 2019 elections. Now, 100 days after taking office, we speak with her about her experience and the challenges Porreres faces ahead.

We'll start at the end, will you run as a candidate again in the next elections?

— I intend to repeat it, unless I end up extremely worn out and say I can't go on anymore. But I would like to repeat it. Now that I have started this stage, and also because the period has been relatively short, I would like to remain a candidate.

You have completed 100 days as the mayoress of Porreres, do you find it very different to be a councillor than to be the mayoress?

— Totally. In fact, when they ask me, what I say is that it changes your life from one day to the next. Being a councilwoman is a lot of responsibility, but being mayoress is much more. Besides being on the phone 24 hours a day, every day of the week, you spend your mornings and afternoons here – at the Town Hall. In the mornings, you attend to visits and the management work doesn't get done; therefore, you have to do the work from home or come back here in the afternoon. Apart from that, people want to see you. It is assumed that during the week you do more office work and also go out on the street when you can, and every weekend you have to be everywhere. As you know, Porreres is a very dynamic town, with a wide range of associations and entities; we are a hyperactive town. Every weekend there are events and you have to go to most of them, because people want to see you, they want to see the mayoress's face. It is also a way for them to gain confidence in you, for them to see that you are coming in now and we are all giving each other this confidence, for there to be this relationship of complicity between the entities and the Town Hall. After 13 years of having El Pi there, of having Xisca there… Xisca is a very important person for the citizens of Porreres, a person who has earned the trust of the citizens. Now that there has been the handover, now it's my turn to do this job. I have a relatively short time, but it is important to have this direct contact with all the citizens.

Now that you have inaugurated the day center, what challenges have you achieved in this term and which ones remain pending?

— During the legislature, as you know, we were coming from behind without a secretary and we had many overdue tenders. There were many contracts that continued to operate with invoices of office because they had ended and the new ones were not coming out. What we have done, which has been very important, has been to unblock all of this. Many of these things are not fully visible because we have also had a problem: when the tender was put out, then deficiencies were found in the administrative or technical data and it had to be put out again, and this again slows down the whole process. But what have we done? The town has grown and we had pending needs. We have started the road in front of the institute. We are in constant contact with the Ministry of Education, which has told us that the project is about to finish and then they can proceed with the drafting of the definitive project. We have intensified street cleaning, because we have a serious problem in Porreres and I would like it to also come out: the town has increased considerably in incivility. And whoever says incivility refers to having little care for urban furniture and also in the matter of waste separation and recycling. We have seen the need to increase cleaning staff to cope with this. It is a shame, because we all want a clean Porreres and a Porreres in good condition, and for this reason the need to increase it has been seen. We also did that campaign about dog excrement, which worked well for a while, but now it has fallen apart again. We have also carried out cat castration campaigns and we will do so again now. We held the first tourism gala and launched a new tourist website, because we realized that a lot of people come here, especially young and middle-aged people, who ask us where they can go and what they can do. The Town Hall had brochures in different languages on paper, but people no longer go with paper; they look for digitized things. We do not have a tourist office or a specific website, and we saw this need. Apart from that, this also came from an initiative of SICTED (Spanish Integrated System of Tourist Quality in Destinations), because many have adhered to this quality system two years ago, and this proposal came out at the meeting. We have carried it forward and on June 12 we inaugurated the website. Apart from making the heritage known in a logical way, we also make the local product, the shops we have and the restaurants known; it is a way of showing all areas of our town. What else have we done? It's just that we have done quite a lot. We still have things to do, obviously…

For the future you have the landfill, the residence... and opening the pool too. It must be an imminent thing, I suppose.

— Yes, it is more than necessary. More than necessary. We wish we could give a date. Well, we are fighting to open it now, but we haven't had much luck with the awarded company. The truth is, it's hard for me to make statements because they haven't even come to see the facilities. We spoke with them late yesterday – the interview was last Thursday – and I don't know if they will sign the contract. Yesterday they were still asking about the staff situation, even though the City Council paid for the staff's subrogation precisely to speed up the procedures and open it sooner. If it's been at least eight or nine months since the staff was sorted out. I mean... I was stunned. They asked: "And who pays for the diesel?". The City Council pays for the diesel, and all of this was in the tender documents! I don't know. We will continue to insist on it. Of course, summer and the heat have arrived, and people – especially the elderly who used to go to the pool – really miss it. When you walk down the street, people tell you: the pool is greatly missed. The truth is, it's a shame, because you know it hasn't been for lack of initiative from the City Council. Nowadays, the problem is that the company that won doesn't respond. It's a pity.

And the landfill?

— With the landfill, we had a project to go to the industrial estate, but then we realized that the plot that had been chosen to locate it was not the most suitable for the area where it was located, as it had companies in front. We reconsidered and realized that there is actually a plot that is more on one side that could be more suitable, taking into account the tasks that a landfill has to do. Therefore, more or less what will change will be the restructuring, but the project itself will be the same. We will have to make certain modifications. However, we have to wait for another subsidy to arrive to move it forward, because it is a quite significant expense.

The round is also another of the things that is underway…

— It is underway, yes. In fact, yesterday we held the information commission. Next week there will be an extraordinary plenary session where the approval of the land transfer will be brought. Once we have approved it in plenary, then the owners will be notified and then we will see if there are any objections or not. If there are none, the process will be faster; if there are, it will slow down a bit. We hope there are none. We calculate that, if all goes well, around September we could tender it and try to have the works executed this year. In principle, it will be a shorter section than the first because it is basically a straight line, but well, now we are waiting and we will see what happens after the extraordinary plenary session.

There is work to be done in every sense…

— Well, what we have to achieve is to open the swimming pool and finish the road. I would really like to lay the first stone of the institute's expansion, which would be an important milestone. I would like to inaugurate the second section of the ring road and, then, develop tenders that we have pending, such as, for example, that of the cemetery, the psychosocial service – we have different ones and there are many more – the gardening service and the cleaning service. All of these have to be put out, but well, we have established an order of priority and they are coming out from time to time, like one last week. Now we also have the tender for the nursery school underway. And… all of this…

Will the works also have to be faced here, in the municipal building?

— Yes, well, I don't know when this can be carried out. I mean, we are short of money and we are aware that we need help. We'll see when we can move forward with it; I don't know if I'll still be around or not. Of course, you have to consider that the City Council... I think the last renovations that were done there, I was very young or I wasn't even born. Apart from the poor condition it is in, it is a City Council that is not very functional today. There are offices, but there are no common spaces to work in; there is also no soundproofing...

It is an old house that was gradually patched up to serve as a Town Hall…

— Exactly, to be a Town Hall. Yes, it has its charm, it has its rooms and the upper floors that I think are very nice, but it needs this remodeling in every sense.

The functioning of the pact. How have these three years of pact with El Pi gone?

— Well, the truth is that they have gone quite well. At first it was a bit complicated, because I think we were also coming from certain habits, let's say in a good sense. They (El Pi) were used to governing practically on their own; in the previous legislature they only had one councilor who was not from their political party. And of course, at first there was a moment when we had to tell them that we didn't know about certain issues, that there was a lack of coordination or that they had to tell us everything. They acknowledged it and apologized; we were completely right, we are a team. From then on, things have been flowing and the truth is that it has gone very well. We can't complain, nor do I think they can complain about us, because there is good coordination and good harmony. We coordinate every week, we are always in contact by phone and we also have weekly meetings, where we put together all the departments, everything we have in progress and what we have pending. The truth is that it has gone very well.

These first three years, visually on the street, the pact has been more visible seeing, almost everywhere together, Joan Obfrador (number 2 of the PP) and Xisca Mora who was the mayor…

— Yes, well, basically the fact that I was a mother also conditioned me a lot. For example, I started in February of last year, that is, 2024, as mayoress, when I finished my maternity leave. Then I asked for a leave of absence from school and started here. During those months, whether you like it or not, they were the two who were here and, when I arrived, they had already formed a small tandem. They were accustomed to going for a snack together. I, since I come from school in the mornings, arrive here and don't go for a snack, but rather leave later. And of course, it's also true that perhaps people saw them a lot together, but it's more than anything an anecdotal thing because they started working together. But well, there is very good harmony with everyone, the truth is that we can't complain.

Since you arrived at the mayor's office, a greater presence has also been noted on social media, both on the City Council's channels and those of the PP. Is this a way to be closer to people nowadays, who use social media? Why is this approach being taken?

— Let's see, people like to see activity, right? There are many things we do here, at the Town Hall, all the bureaucracy and management, which require a lot of work behind the scenes, and sometimes citizens think that if they don't see you on the street, you're not doing anything. Therefore, one way to publicize all the steps and progress that have been made, or the shortcomings too, is to put it on social media. We also have to consider that not all citizens have access to it, and besides, there are two different social networks: one aimed at older people and the other at younger people. That's why we try to post on both networks. But it's true that people really like to see what you're doing. And it's an extra job to do, I mean, because it's not just about your day-to-day and the work you do, but then you have to make the publication as a way to make it known.

Thank you very much. I don't know if you want to add anything else about these first 100 days of the mayoress?

— No, the only thing I can say is that I am at the disposal of the citizens. We are here in the mornings, but I am available to serve 24 hours a day, and in everything I can help them with, they have me here.