It’s not that the good folk of Carataunas are lucky, but that the dead have had a stroke of luck – the cemetery is to be enlarged. The Mayor, Salvador Rodríguez, claims that the new cemetery, which has been open since 1994 and has 33 ‘residents,’ doesn’t even have deeds; something that he has sorted out, as well as giving the go-ahead to buy 3,300 sq/m of adjacent land so that it can have car-parking facilities.

[mappress]Obviously with a hyper-active cheque book, the Mayor has also ordered the purchase of another 70,000 sq/m on which the village will have an industrial estate.

The said land corresponds to the old iron-ore mines de la Virgen de Fátima, which began operations in the 50’s and spluttered to a halt around ten to 15 years ago. In it’s heyday, the iron-ore was trundled down to Motril port in the small lorries of the day. Once there it was shipped off to the iron-ore-smelting industry in Bilbao.