The castle hasn’t been lit at night for months now. The Beach is deserted. Bars and Restaurants (particularly those foreign-owned) are closing down, either permanently or until Spring. For example, Legends is gone, closed, vanished, and Manhattan Bar is closed until April. And the Town Hall is now publicly complaining about the increase in the number of stray dogs wandering the streets.
What’s it all about, Alfie? Well, as Bill Clinton was wont to say, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
The Chief Economist for the Sunday Times, David Smith, has, for a long time, measured the health of the British economy by counting the number of skips on his street. Investment in property and property improvement, as measured by his ‘skip count’ have been his rough take on the overall health of the economy. And his current count is “nil.”
Well, the equivalent (in reverse) in Spain is the number of stray dogs on the streets. The poor animals are the first to go when economic decline hits a family. Another mouth to feed is not on the family agenda. Hence the complaints from the Town Hall.
There is no doubt the recession has hit us, and hit us hard. The Town Hall is out of money (see last month’s report on tax-raising measures); tourism, a major source of income, is suffering. And unemployment is at a record high, despite the Government’s best efforts to ‘massage’ the statistics (i.e. lie). There are more signs too, that economic decline is among us, and affecting everybody. A casual conversation with an estate agent based in Lanjarón revealed a grand total of two – yes, two property sales in the whole of last year. And one of them was at a price reduced from €125,000 to €52,000!
As it happens, the foreigners worst hit by all this are the Brits, due to the decline in the value of the pound versus the euro by roughly 25-30%. Expat Brits dependent on UK based income (mainly pensions in one form or another) have seen their standard of living drop severely. And the number of Brits now able to buy their dream retirement home here, or maybe just invest in the Spanish property market, is now reduced to a new low.
Mind you, as I write this, I saw news today that the UK is officially out of recession, due to the fact that economic growth in the last quarter of 2009 was measured at +0.1%. Well, whoopee, but as a former Economics student, I would suggest an old joke: “Why do economists use decimal points? Well, just to prove they have a sense of humour.”