Following the recent debate in the City Council of Sant Josep on the presence of symbols linked to neo-Nazism in cabs in the municipality, Councilman Josep Antoni Prats Serra, of ARA Eivissa, announced his intention to take the motion to other municipalities on the island. The proposal, which was rejected in Sant Josep, seeks to regulate the display of symbols associated with extreme right-wing ideologies on public transport vehicles, pointed out by some citizens as a possible “exaltation of intolerant ideas”. Prats indicated that, although they considered taking the proposal to the Consell Insular de Ibiza, they finally decided to limit it to the municipalities, since the regulation of these issues is covered in local ordinances. The measure, according to the councilman, “basically, what it is about is what you said, that there are vehicles that carry unauthorized signs and therefore should not carry them. It is as simple as that, because public service vehicles represent all of us. It is as simple as that”. ARA Eivissa thus plans to continue its offensive to ban this symbology in public transport throughout the island, in search of a coordinated response in the municipalities to reinforce the rejection of extremist symbols in public service spaces.
The reasons in Sant Josep
The text of the motion indicates that the cab service, although performed with a privately owned vehicle, is a public passenger transportation service governed by ordinances approved by each city council.
And it clarifies that all the ordinances of the island of Ibiza specify how the exterior identifiers of the vehicles must be (stripes, municipal badges, license number…), and also make it clear that “any other distinctive on the exterior or interior of the vehicle will need the corresponding authorization of the City Council” (article 7 of the Ordinance of the City Council of Sant Josep de sa Talaia). Likewise, authorizations are frequently granted to carry advertising, for which the license owners must present documentation indicating the characteristics (image, size, etc.).
Other municipalities
As indicated by the political forces that carried forward the motion, different members of the signatory municipal groups have received complaints from users of the service, as well as warnings from several citizens. “About the fact that there are cabs on the island of Ibiza (and at least one of them is from our municipality) that circulate with visible symbols on the outside of the vehicles, identifying a certain political tendency. A symbology, moreover, associated with demonstrations investigated for hate crimes,” they wrote. Thus, they also exposed that “there are cabs that carry symbols not authorized by the respective City Council, which means an exaltation of certain political ideals, and also symbols used in acts investigated for alleged hate crimes,” they state in the motion. Similarly, they add, it is worth remembering that, according to Law 52/2007, of December 26, Article 15, states that “public administrations, in the exercise of their powers, shall take appropriate measures for the removal of shields, badges, plaques and other objects or commemorative mentions of exaltation, personal or collective, of the military uprising, the Civil War and the repression of the Dictatorship”.
Proposed resolution
PSOE, Unides Podem and ARA Eivissa want to replicate in the different City Councils that, by the competences attributed to them, the exhibition of unauthorized symbology in the licensed cabs of the municipality is investigated, and especially that which may be perceived by citizens as identifying intolerant ideologies. “In the cases that are detected, the corresponding files will be opened to apply the corresponding corrective and sanctioning measures”, they point out.
