Calp Speaks Europe: Multicultural Coexistence and Democratic Participation in a Mediterranean Town

When the Minority Is the Majority Calp is a Mediterranean town of some 28,000 registered inhabitants where more than 54% hold a nationality other than Spanish and over 99 nationalities coexist in daily life. What is often discussed in Brussels as an abstract consequence of free movement is, in Calp, simply the composition of the street, the school and the market. This local dialogue brings together residents from the town's largest national communities, alongside elected representatives and local service providers, to examine what strong local cohesion actually requires when a majority of residents were born elsewhere. The debate will address three concrete questions: how municipal services are planned and financed for a population whose real size and composition differ from the figures on which public funding is calculated; how residents who cannot vote in national elections, or in any election at all, find channels to influence decisions that affect them; and what the European Union looks like from the perspective of citizens who exercise their free movement rights every day without ever describing it in those terms. At least half of the session is reserved for open exchange with the audience. Interpretation will be available to ensure that language is not a barrier to participation.