• Rita Bosaho to become Spain’s first-ever Black Congresswoman
• Immigrants comprise 15% of population, just 1% of congressional seats
Regardless of which party wins the country’s general elections on Sunday, Spain will make history with the election of the first-ever black person to sit in the national Congress of Deputies.
Rita Bosaho, a Spanish citizen born in Equatorial Guinea, who tops the list of candidates in the Valencian province of Alicante for insurgent-left anti-austerity party Podemos, will almost certainly be selected to serve in Congress as a result of the Dec. 20th balloting.
Bosaho’s election and the possible selection of other immigrant candidates to serve in the next session of Congress bucks a longstanding pattern in Spanish election history that has effectively barred most non-Spanish born candidates from ever taking office.
Although 15 percent of Spain’s population is foreign-born and nearly 2 million immigrants have obtained Spanish citizenship allowing them to vote, the immigrant turnout rate is 20 points lower than Spanish-born voters and the proportion of foreign-born deputies serving in Congress is just 1 percent.
Read the Full Story in English at El País >>
