It was one of Benny’s last achievements before the elections changed his employment: Almunecar was awarded the title of Municipio Turistico. Now the new Mayoress is just as keen to see this thing through and has announced that the agreement will be signed with the Junta in the Autumn.

But what exactly is a municipio turistico and how will it affect the town?

Basically, it is a ‘denomination’ or category. In the words of Trinidad Herrera (the Mayoress) “The agreement will affect the development of projects, improve the quality of tourism services, protect the natural resources and environment, better the infrastructure etc.” It sounds a bit like winning the lottery, so we looked it up on the Junta’s website:

Legal term created by autonomous regions in order to distinguish those municipalities that have certain requisites, such as visiting population and a budget dedicated to tourism etc. Towns that hold the title have assumed extra responsibilities and therefore have the right to receive from the Junta specific funds in order to finance such functions.

The funds received depend on the number of visitors to the town, in part based on the hotel occupation.

Basically, the town already has long had to to use municipal funds to provide extra services to function as a tourist town, so what this agreement between the Junta and the town actually does is to ‘recognise’ the extra financial effort that Almunecar has been making as a tourist town and to allocate special funds to make up for it.

A town like Zafarraya or Baza, for example, doesn’t survive through tourism and therefore does not have to dedicate funds to promote itself as a tourism destination, whereas Almunecar does.

Almunecar is the only town in the whole province that has received this ‘distinction,’ although Nerja, just across the provincial boundary, already boasts the same category.

(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)