Some members of the Almuñécar hostelry community consider that the Fería de Dia, set up along Calle Pinto Rivera is little more than a ‘slap in the face’ from the Town Hall and many people would agree with them.

When you consider that businesses have been faithfully paying their taxes, all year round, for the chance of scraping back funds during July and August after running at a loss during the hard months, you can easily sympathize with their discontent when the Town Hall uses their tax money to set up direct, non-tax-paying competition to skim off the little tourism money being spent around the town.

At least two bars have these stalls set up mere metres from their  terraces – for which the Town Hall extracts a pretty penny in licence fees. The Gazette took a look down their on Friday the 10th and saw that the all their tables and chairs were empty whilst the stalls were full. Observe the article photograph how the two bars’ tables are empty slap in the middle of lunch time.

How can you compete against it, especially when you are indirectly paying for them?

Any business will tell you that the evenings during the summer fair are a write-off, but Almuñécar businesses still had the morning, when the fairground was closed… but not now with the ruinous Fería de Dia. – ruinous for everybody else, that is.

So, who exactly makes money from the summer fair? Well, it’s obvious that the fairground attractions take their earnings with them, so that doesn’t stay in the town. As for the casetas (temporary bars) within the feria, they belong to the political parties: PP, PSOE, IU & CA; i,e, these political parties are filling their coffers – not local businesses. The other casetas are the Semana Santa brotherhoods who provide the processions – tax exempt, of course.

We won’t even go into how Almuñécar loses it’s main free parking area – a loss of several hundred parking spaces – right at the height of summer to make way for the political and religious bars.

Perhaps it’s time for the Town Hall – it is irrelevant who is in power at any given moment – to take its collective foot off the heads of drowning businesses and use their tax money to help them instead of making it worse for them.

Yes, have a fair by all means, but not in August – have one in the low season to bring people into town, but, above all else, stop taking the piss with Ferías de Dia.

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