Around 50 small businessmen and self-employed workers from the building sector turned up for the meeting organized by the Almuñécar Partido Andalucista. The meeting was a debate on where the said sector was going

Ex-Mayor, Juan Carlos Benavides, gave his own analysis on the situation, which he considered the “prime motor for economic development and job creation, together with tourism.”

He criticised several paralyzed projects, such as the 7-star hotel, or the 5-star one (El Cercado de Santa Cruz) in San Sebastian

His criticisms were evenly spread around; against the Junta over the new restrictions on urban development along the coast, as well as the Local Area Council (Mancomunidad de Costa Tropical) over the controversial renovation of a contact for 25 years to Aguas y Servicios, where no other company was invited to compete in the tender.

Finally, he came to a positive message, saying that despite the crisis, there was room for manoeuvre to carry out a “series of actions to oxygenate the economy and generate employment.”

He is basically proposing kick-starting the local building trade, if the citizenry support his party, he says, by creating a Plan Municipal de Inversiones. This would entail jettisoning all “superfluous and luxury spending,” which he calculated as representing between five and six million euros annually, and that these funds should be channeled through local small and medium-sized businesses.

Secondly, a Plan de Inversiones de la Mancomunidad worth 21.3m euros, destined for the improvement of water-mains infrastructure on the Costa Tropical should be used to hire local businesses in Almuñécar and La Herradura, presumably instead of Aguas y Servicios.

“We cannot remain silent,” stated Juan Carlos Benavides,in such questions as to the budget for the A-7 Autovía or the irrigation pipeline network out of the Rules Reservoir.

Editorial Comment: Well, that’s what Benny is suggesting. The question is, is there any future for the construction trade after the glut produced by the building boom and the subsequent collapse of the sector.

Without doubt, something needs to be done because whilst politicians in Madrid can claim that things are improving, any independent observer that would choose to walk through the streets of the towns on the Costa Tropical would observe that things appear to be getting worse, with more and more businesses cutting back or closing down.

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