The La Herradura Civic Centre has only been in existence for six years, but from the very beginning it has been plagued by bad workmanship, or as the Spanish say, chapuzas (botch jobs).

In the heyday of Almuñécar expansion under the successive Benavides administrations, public buildings were popping up all over the place: La Casa de la Cultura, the sports stadium, the new medical centre, the municipal market with its underground parking and, of course, the Centro Civico in La Herradura, to name just some.

Nobody can deny that Almuñécar expanded, offering its residents and visitors impressive and numerous installations, yet as the years drag on, it is becoming increasingly more apparent that some of them were built shoddily and with dubious material – it is inconceivable that a well built municipal market has its underground car parked closed because it is falling apart… in just over 25 years of existence. And then, just across the road from it, the state of the Aquarium comes to light…

Which brings us back to the Centro Cívico in La Herradura. Four million euros were spent to bring this magnificent concept into being, giving the village a focal point for cultural activities and events, yet from day one the problem of damp and flooding in the lower floors has been a constant headache.

Whether, as in the estimation of the First Councillor for La Herradura, Juan José Ruiz Joya, we’d be better off demolishing it and starting again, rather than continually patching it up, is a matter of opinion, but the fact remains that since it opened its doors in November 2006, pumps in the basement have been busily pumping out the water, which finds its way in because it was not damp-proofed properly – whether it was damp-proofed at all remains in question.

At the bottom of the entrance ramps there are no drains, meaning that every time is rains there are puddles that even Christopher Columbus would hesitate to venture across, but that is nothing compared to what is continually below the auditorium stage. Up to half a metre of water sits there, whether it rains or not, despite the pumps working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – there are two of them, so imagine what the electricity consumption is..

So noisy are the pumps that the background hum comes through during all the cultural acts. In fact, the only time that the pumps are turned off is during the Andrés Segovia guitar competition for obvious reaons… Everybody prays that it doesn’t rain, otherwise with the pumps off, it will start coming up through the floor. And that’s it, the rest of the time, the pumps slog on.

We won’t list the rest of the defects that the Centro Cívico has, but maybe… just maybe, it’s time that somebody is held responsible for all this, wouldn’t you say?

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