Businesses within Almuñécar were shocked and dismayed to receive up to nine, 300-euro fines (2,700€) in one day for allegedly breaching rubbish placement regulations.
But it was no mistake, because the Town Hall had launched a shocking Fine-Blitz on Almuñécar’s already tottering businesses, apparently to fill the municipal coffers.
Everybody was livid.
On the 20th of September, the Ideal newspaper ran a full-spread article, sporting photographs of six businesses that had ‘received a visit,’ from the Town Hall.
When we went along to speak with some of them, asking whether they would be willing to be interviewed, most of them declined, believing that it would only incur the wrath of the Town Hall, rightly or wrongly.
The PP, sensing that they had a large stick in their hands to hit the Mayor’s party with, jumped in to heavily criticise the governing party, for both this controversial tactic, as well as the generally disastrous handling of a painfully weak summer tourist campaign.
Two days later; i.e. the 23rd, the Town Hall announced that businesses that had received multiple fines would only have to pay one, and that it would be open to appeal.
Did the Town Hall go too far and had to back down? (More in A Fine Mess II)