What exactly is going on? What exactly does the Town Hall have against car owners? Why is it going out of its way to turn people away? Is it short-sighted lunacy or something worse; more sinister? These are questions that must have crossed just about everybody’s mind at some point during the summer.

Yes, the two underground car parks were opened by the 1st of August, although certainly in the case of Velilla, work continues even though the summer peak period has passed. However, never has it been so evident that the Town Hall is more intent upon forcing people to use these installations than providing much-needed parking for the summer visitors. Let’s take a look at a couple of events since San Juan and the onset of summer.

Firstly, as we reported in the July issue, Parking Leo was closed down for a week on the 22nd of June, causing 160 vehicle owners to abandon the installations under pain of being towed away. The Town Hall justified this mind-boggling move, on the very first day of summer, with a report from the municipal fire department, saying that the installations were deficient; i.e., were lacking certain signs and a lift/emergency stairs. Such was the supposed dire danger to members of the public that the ‘emergency’ work just could not wait until September the 30th.

So why is it, dear readers that both the new car parks in San Cristóbal and Velilla were opened without working lifts and God knows how many other deficiencies?

Every summer for at least the last five or so years, the site for the Palacios de Justicia behind Las Góndolas has been made available to summer visitors, In other words, improvised parking was provided for the massive influx of cars. Yet this summer, days after the new car parks being opened, the Local Police without prior warning came along and closed this parking area trapping all the cars within.

I have not been able to confirm this, but it also appears that the private parking area belonging to Hotel Hélios, next to the municipal sports pavilion, was also closed down a day or two after the inauguration of the San Cristóbal car park, thereby forcing the hotel to use these underground installations.

Now what conclusions can you or anybody draw from these controversial moves? You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes, right?

The Mayor announced, with the opening of the two new car parks, that the town had created 1,500 new parking spaces, all thanks to the new underground facilities: Altillo, Velilla, Juan Carlos and San Cristóbal. Bollocks! How many thousands of free parking spaces have been destroyed in the same period? Do we physically have more parking, paying or otherwise, since the construction of these installations?

The answer is no; incredibly we have fewer – do your own maths. Think of all the parking lost along the old Paseo Altillo (above and below); think of the lost parking along San Cristóbal; think of the lost parking along the top end of the Avenida de Andalucía; think of the lost parking along the Velilla road. We’re losing parking spaces, the Town Hall shuts down improvised parking behind Las Góndolas and the blue zones are so prolific that we can change our name from Costa Tropical to Costa Azul.

People are hopping mad. In the case of San Cristóbal, a family with a member in a wheelchair had the disagreeable surprise of having to heft the chair and occupant from the second level because the lifts don’t work. Somebody else had to do it with a pushchair and all their beach equipment. The reason that they were on the 2nd level in the first place is because the first level is reserved for private parking – brilliant!

One man demanded to use the complaints book – there wasn’t one, so he called the Local Police, who didn’t see a cause for complaint. Not impressed, he went to the Guardia Civil, who certainly did. Remember these installations are municipal owned and as the disgruntled user pointed out, if the installations would have been private the Local Police would have seen cause to accept a complaint…

The Mayor said that the unacceptable situation of cars being parked for a whole month has been eliminated by the introduction of the blue zones. Well, that is not really the case because people, like yours truly, had no other option during the whole of July but to leave the car parked without moving it, for fear of losing the parking space – I lost my passenger side wing mirror in that period.

[nggallery id=51]