(This article was originally published in May 2009 and is visible now so that readers can look at what was happening on the Costa Tropical back then).

And now we move onto the two Almuñécar underground car parks under construction – or better said, not under construction.

Undeniably, the new building company that had taken on the task to finish the San Cristóbal and Velilla car parks had been working away at a fair rate of knots (speed), but they too have had to discontinue work on the site because of a lack of funds, plunging any hope that these two communications arteries would be flowing by the summer, into the rubbish bin.

The target was, that by summer, both would be covered over, thus re-opening a two-way flow of traffic, even though work would be still going on below.

Now the businesses at both ends of town that are affected are at their wits end, fearing another summer of chaos and reduced trade – and who can blame them.

On the 23rd of July, 2006, the Mayor stated before the press that both sites would be finished and operationl before nine months were over… More importantly, he promised that these two projects would not become another ‘Altillo Affair;’ an open and inactive pit for several years. Then again, who envisaged in the summer of 2006 that two years later the world would be plunged into the worst global economical crisis since the Great Depression?

The problem is that the building developer for both projects cannot get the necessary credit from the banks to pay the construction company to finish the job.

Will the Velilla businesses – whose situation is worse than the San Cristóbal because they don’t have a return road running behind the beach road – survive yet another bleak summer? Where are the residents of the blocks there supposed to park? Will they even bother to come?

And the big question is: is it beyond reason to demand that the pits are just filled in with earth until such times as the economical climate improves, thus providing rough-and-ready, surface parking and transit?

(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)