La Cañada parking, which was inaugurated in 2008, is situated at the main entrance to Frigiliana, next to the old sugar factory. This was thanks to an 8m-euro investment by a private entity. However, the loan repayments slipped and the Spanish bank, Banesto, ended up with the majority of the parking slots at the end of 2010, as well as closing the 250 rotational parking slots; i.e., ones for public use.

Now, it doesn’t look like a car park – it looks like an enormous 5-storey building, built on the side of a barranco, but a car park is what it is… and a closed one, at that.

So, for the last 15 months, tourists coming up to the village have had to park elsewhere, with a long walk involved. The only people that can use it are residents that bought private spaces in it – the bank cannot very well prevent them from using their parking-space ‘property.’

Now, obviously, the Town Hall has not been sitting on its hands since then, but has been trying to convince Banesto to reopen the facilities, allowing the Town Hall to run the 250 rotational parking spaces. However, the only response from the bank has been studied silence, bless their cotton socks. Well, that’s not entirely true because during the Festival Frigiliana Tres Culturas the bank did begrudgingly open it for four whole days!

The Councillor for Urban Planning, José Antonio González Conejero, has let it be known to the press that he had written to the bank again to pressure it into re-opening the bloody car park, for the benefit of the village, as the May-Fair celebrations (Día de la Cruz) will have tourists roaming around in hordes, not to mention, of course the village fiestas in June.

“The Town Hall gave building permission for the car park to offer rotational parking to the public; and certainly not to be locked up as a private parking facility,” bemoaned the said councillor

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the opposition party (PSOE) have pointed out that the parking facilities were inaugurated, in the first place, without the requisite licence.

(News: Frigiliana, Costa de Sol, Axarquia, Malaga, Andalucia)