Parla


Parla is a municipality in the Community of Madrid, Spain. Part of the Madrid metropolitan area, it is located in the southern part of the region.
WWW Official Site

Geography

The municipality of Parla covers an area of 24.43 km2.
The municipality largely features a monotonous flat relief. The, the cerro del Pico, and the cerro de los Cantos are the only noteworthy hills.
Housing is sandwiched west, south and east respectively by the A-42, by the watercourse, and by the R-4 and the high-speed railways from Madrid to Levante and to Seville. The non-urbanised north of the municipality, featuring the Cerro de la Cantueña hill, borders with the industrial estate of in Fuenlabrada.
It borders six municipalities of the community of Madrid: Fuenlabrada to the North; Torrejón de Velasco and Torrejón de la Calzada to the South; Pinto to the East; and Griñón and Humanes de Madrid to the West.
Its elevation is 648.5 meters above sea level.

History

The attests occupation of the territory in the Lower Paleolithic. The Cerro de la Iglesia site, in, also features a prehistoric chronology.
Presumably settled by Madrid's council militias, Parla was a hamlet attached to the sexmo of Villaverde, part of the land of Madrid, in the middle ages prior to its segregation into a seigneurial lordship. On a privilege issued on 6 January 1338, the monarchy ceded control of the hamlet of "Parlas" to the cardinal Pedro Barroso as a payment for services rendered. This document was later affirmed in 1351. In such, the settlement was a lordship up until the 19th century. Humanejos fully depopulated by the late 17th century.
After the Peninsular War, Parla became home to a large number of refugees from other localities.

Politics and government

The current mayor is José María Fraile, who was elected in 2008. The previous mayor, Tomás Gómez Franco, resigned from his post in October 2008 to accept the position of secretary general of the PSOE.
The majority of local politics involves three of the major political parties: the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, the Popular Party (PP), and the United Left (IU).
During the 2007 Spanish regional elections, the PSOE carried 74.43% of the vote and retained 20 town councillors. In comparison, the People's Party carried only 16.61% of the vote, while the IU carried 6.15%. The other political parties were unable to obtain sufficient votes to gain representation on the town council.
Local elections take place every four years, and are held in conjunction with the autonomous elections of the Community of Madrid. The next elections will take place in the year 2011.
The local government is divided into the following departments :

Demographics

At the beginning of the 20th century, Parla had a population of 1,237. The municipality then underwent a population explosion, until reaching its current population of 150,000.
The majority of population growth occurred during the late 1960s due to the major urban migration that was occurring in Spain at the time. Between 1960 and 1970, the population grew 470%, from 1,809 inhabitants to 10,317. This migration continued at an elevated rate during the 1970s, as people from Castilla-La Mancha, Andalusia and Extremadura settled in the area in order to commute to Madrid.
Starting in 1996, Parla once more began to experience a noticeable population growth, this time due to immigration from Algeria, Morocco, Romania, Poland, and sub-Saharan Africa. This trend continues today.

People

Twin towns