The Town Hall has just announced that the construction companies are ‘working around the clock’ to have the two controversial underground car parks open for the end of this month.

Despite reiterated promises of having the two installations open for summer, it now appears that the San Cristóbal works won’t be concluded until the 23rd of July, with the Velilla works finally concluding on the 30th of July – with the first month of summer already gone.

To further exasperate Almuñécar’s parking problems, the Parking Leo installations under the municipal market (now Parking Hermanos García), re-opened after nearly a week of being closed with the announcement that the regular clients with annual contracts with Parking Leo will not be able to renew until after the summer. The company evidently prefers to squeeze maximum profits by not catering for reserved parking slots, thus leaving nearly two hundred vehicle owners with the choice of either paying a reported daily rate of around 20 euros, or using the ever-decreasing supply of free parking on the streets, thanks to the constant encroachment of blue-zone parking.

Talking of blue-zone parking, the Town Hall has also announced that they are considering making El Paseo de la China into a blue zone as well, albeit, only over the summer. This is the area between Chinasol and Edifício Los Ramos, which is the last apartment block heading towards Cotoboro

On the other hand, the Town Hall appears to have backed down over their plans to extend blue zoning to just below Hotel Playacálida (Taramay). This stalled plan was highly controversial as there are no commercial premises on this dual avenue to justify blue-zoning – the concept of blue zones was to increase parking turn over in front of shops as business and thus provide greater accessibility to them, which was and is a concept that nobody disagrees with.

However, the blanket blue-zone coverage of Almuñécar and la Herradura’s beaches, from eleven in the morning to eleven at night, seven days a week, is an incredible folly, destined to provide short-term economic relief for the municipal coffers at the price of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs and turning these coastal towns into tourist-wise ghost towns.