The owners of chiringuitos along the Costa Tropical continue to chew their fingernails over their future. A positive outcome appears closer, but far from certain.
The reason for this budding optimism is because a commission has been formed, comprising of establishment owners, ecologists, workers unions and the Junta de Andalucia, to come up with the basis that would allow them to remain on the provinces beach… at least for some years to come.
The First Minister for the Andaluz Parliament (Junta), Jose Griñan, made the announcement on the 17th, pointing out that a solid judicial basis was needed which would ‘give fruit to a strategic alliance’ between ecologist concerns and the Spanish-Mediterranean institution of the chiringuito.
And that’s the trouble you see: the chiringuito has really morphed or mutated out of its original format, which was a provisional, seasonal construction, into a permanent restaurant construction occupying beach space. Torrenueva, at the beginning of the 80’s, was a good example of the temporary beach bars – on the 1st of September, the one down the eastern end of the beach, literally disappeared until the next season.
However, the chiringuito has become an essential component of Andaluz beaches; to get rid of them would be to shed part of the essence of our beaches. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to make an analogy between our chiringuitos and Parisian, boulevard, cafe terraces.
Beaches and river courses are public domain in Spain; technically there are no private beaches, so private businesses permanently occupying parts of beaches is a legal problem. This is why chiringuitos that are physically sitting in the middle of a beach are being demolished and moved back to become part of the seaside promenades (paseos).
Los Herradureños will remember that back in the late 80’s the old chiringuitos were demolished and the lucky ones were allowed to rebuild next to the paseo/beach roads.
Anyway, back to the new commission, the provincial delegate for Granada is compiling an exhaustive report on the specifications of the Costa Tropical’s chiringuitos, which will be forwarded to the commission, so that by the end of the year this commission will be able to reach a conclusion…
In the meantime the majority of the 52 chiringuitos on the Costa Tropical have licences that are on the point of expiring…
(News: Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)
This is terrible – Spain is getting more like the UK every day. Zapetero’s days are numbered – He has helped ruin this fine country. This ridiculous commission should forget this immediately, and wait for the new government to throw such rubbish out, along with all the other left-wing ideas that are bringing Spain down to the levels of countries such as Greece and Ireland.