The register, or being registered, is the first requirement for access to citizens’ economic, social, educational and cultural rights. For many citizens, registration is something “normal” or “innate”, but for many people it is the first major obstacle to living in a municipality and, therefore, a tool to do business for others.

Legally, registration should be a minor bureaucratic procedure. Municipalities are obliged to censure persons resident in the municipality, whatever their place of residence: “Your own house, the one you rent, the cottage, the occupied house or the bridge.” This was confirmed by Leire Zugazua, Vitorian trustee (citizen defender) in his presentation at the Casa de Cultura Ignacio Aldekoa. Ararteko has also stated this in his reports.

What is the standard for?

The health card is the first emergency right to be registered. There is more: the right to schooling for children, or to social and economic aid for people in emergency situations (in the latter case, they also require seniority of the standard: from six months to three years).

Therefore, Josu Oskoz, from Argitus, has stressed that the task of the administrations should be to care for its inhabitants, “to pay attention and help people, to apply the most favorable rule/law that corresponds to them and that infringes their rights”. Why does the opposite happen? A person working in the legal assistance of minors responds from the public: “There will be someone in the administration who orders that the law be applied like this, that it should give its face!”

Multiple obstacles and business

The Administration, however, places many obstacles on the most vulnerable. How? On the one hand, newcomers, for example, come to the Municipal Emergency Department. In it, according to the worker, they do not take data with the excuse of not being registered in Vitoria. However, the registration in the same, that is, “the person with last name X Y Z has stayed that day in this office”, is the first sign that you are living in the municipality, the document that certifies since when you are in the municipality, to later obtain the census or receive aid. So, you should go to the office until you meet an employee who will receive your name: “We ask them to go every day,” says a member of the public’s Open Doors association.

The cooperative Enara has collaborated in the report, they work with women who work in households, and Katerine Astudillo has come on its behalf. There are working women who work 24 hours for seven days in the households and cannot register in them, while others are charged with the standard of that home where they work and live.

The report contains more situations: people whose owners do not let them be registered and vice versa: people who pay for a home and do not live in it. According to Receiver Zugazua, the administration, in addition to hindering registration, sometimes sends “letters incomprehensible to many people”. “In short, they are requirements for the renewal of the standard, some citizens have lost the standard and their associated rights as a result of these letters.” They also hinder or conceal the social standard: “There is no information about it anywhere.”

More obstacles from the Administration: a person can live on the street, but they tell him that the standard must be attached to a house, that needs a house to house the notifications and communications, although today it can be done telematically. The trustee gives the example of a person who wanted to register in the occupied Errekaleor district, to which a judge annulled him. And, on the contrary, it has also given examples of more guaranteed judges and judgments.

 

 

Can the situation be improved?

Francesc Mateu i Hosta comes from the Catalan Syndics Forum. In addition to 40 Catalan municipalities, the syndics of Mallorca, Menorca, Bilbao and Vitoria participate. It shows the example of Barcelona: information and help to make the census is offered on the municipal website and in any office. It has also provided a handsheet in which the Department of Health of the Generalitat provides a census in twelve languages and instructions for receiving health care. They have also conducted training. Demands have been heard from the public to register people at home, as well as to promote the social census.

In short, problems with the standard result from housing problems. On the other hand, it is a symptom of sociophobia and racism in society and the scarcity of resources that the municipalities have dedicated to the subject.