It’s been a very rocky month indeed for the band of Motril who were told by the Council that they would have to play their final tune due to lack of funds. Amidst ‘crisis’ cutbacks to try and save a bit of Motril’s dwindling cash supplies the Council concluded that the 146-year-old band, was a luxury the town could survive without.
Well, that may be true, but it was a pretty drastic measure that had a lot of people up in arms, least of all the 40 band members themselves, comprising of mainly music students, earning between 300 to 500 euros a month for a modest ten hours a week of their time.
Upon hearing the news of their dismissal, they all burst into a symphony of action, giving interviews, writing letters and putting up posters. Unfortunately however, they took things a little too far by staging a protest march on the Monday of Easter Week and interrupting the poor guys who were trying to get on with the procession. This did not make them popular bunnies and although they humbly admitted their mistake it did them little good.
It turns out the Council has now come up with an alternative solution to keep the band of Motril alive and, at a quarter of the expense. They plan to start a new band comprised of residents from Motril only (several of the previous members were not locals) and use it as a platform to ‘promote young talent,’ it claims… Cheap talent, I think, being more applicable.