Normally it’s the average person that gets nervous when they walk into the Tax Office, but it was the turn of the staff in the Almuñécar Municipal Tax Office to get the jitters when the Mayor walked in.

Almuñécar Mayor, Trinidad Herrera, paid a visit to the local tax office to reassure them they wouldn’t lose their jobs – the rumour was that the office would be shut down.

The ex-Mayor Benavides’s party, the Convergencia Andaluza (CA), had expressed the opinion that Sr. Herrera was going to close this municipal office and return the tax-collection service to APAT, which is an organisation belonging to the Provincial Council in Granada.

The Mayor, accompanied by the Councillor for Tax Collection, (Hacienda), Antonio Laborda, denied that this was her intention ‘at the moment.’

“This doesn’t mean,” she pointed out, “that this might not happen in the future, as a municipal council we have to look out for what is most convenient for the Town Hall, obviously. But you shouldn’t worry because I am not going to gamble with anybody’s job.”

“This controversy,” she continued, “has no foundation based on any deal, such as the one that brought this office into being under Francisco Ledesma.”

Just in case anybody was beginning to relax, she added, “When there is a proposal that covers conditions of general interest, it will be acted upon… but you are part of that ‘general interest. ”

One gets the impression that the staff went home that day not feeling any more reassured because their office is run by a private company (Recafer) whose contract runs out in March next year. Tick, tick, tick…

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