Mayor: “I’m no longer going to put up with the rubbish and lies published on social networks”

Wednesday 6th July 2022 – Mike Smith
Source: Facebook – José Chulvi

Mayor José Chulvi has released a statement on his Facebook page in response to the growing criticism on social media – we have reproduced it in full in English below:

Dear friends,

I have been mayor of Xàbia for eleven years. In this time I have experienced very good and very bad moments from the hand of politics. Days full of satisfaction and others of frustration.

Governing for everyone is not easy, at least for those of us who take it with great responsibility, ethics and a vocation for public service.

Those who are close to me know the time and energy I dedicate to my work. Too much, many tell me. And they also know that what makes me suffer is not being able to respond quickly to demands that I share; the impotence of having to deal with companies that you know from the beginning are not going to comply or of seeing how endless procedures eat up the energy of councillors every day.

Not to mention the indignation I feel when selfish people ruin the effort of the great majority of the town to have clean public spaces and a good coexistence [with each other]. And yes. It also bothers me to have to make decrees or ordinances prohibiting things that, if we had some common sense and empathy, I’m sure we wouldn’t need.

And all this dealing with time and laws that make everything more complicated. Where the bureaucracy does not follow logic or personal will … and much less with the speed and simplified explanations that today’s society asks for.

I take being Mayor of Xàbia very seriously. I know that when I speak I represent, for better or for worse, an entire town and that my words can have an impact on the image of Xàbia or that of the Town Council.

I explain all this to you in the hope that you will understand that the accusation that the mayor “neither feels nor suffers” could not be further from the truth. It’s hard for me to bite my tongue (or take my fingers off the keyboard) almost every day and it hurts me to see how there are other people who do nothing to dignify politics or institutions.

But what I am not going to put up with anymore is the rubbish and lies that are published on social networks, taking advantage of the lack of self-regulation and the apparent impunity that false profiles give.

I owe it to myself as a person, to my family which suffers a lot and to you as part of a society that cannot continue to look the other way in the face of the normalization of insults, fake news and hate on the internet.

Even the longest road begins with a first step and I am willing to take it and denounce it. And to those who see it normal for me to suffer these defamations and insults just because I dedicate myself to politics, I just ask you to reflect on that. For any day it can touch you for any reason or misunderstanding. And at that moment you will see that the “professional haters” have no logic or reason and that those who spread “hoaxes” do not even bother to verify if it is true, nor to repair the evil when they realize that the news they have spread was all lies.

PS: I leave you with a photo of Xàbia, a wonderful place. Each one chooses what he sees and how he wants others to see his town.