One day you can park in front of your home for free, the next you wake up in a blue zone. This is what happened to the neighbourhood of Las Explanadas in Motril.

The Town Council decided to turn 222 free parking spaces into blue-zone parking ones meaning that people couldn’t even afford to park in front of their own homes – and they have no garages. On top of that, functionaries from the Tax Office, Police Station and other public offices compete with them for the few free spaces left.

“I’m going to end up selling my car because on top of having to pay high, municipal vehicle taxes, I now have to pay to park it,” complained one local. Money from both outlays, of course, end up in the same pocket; that of the Town Hall.

Parking problems began – at least, ‘free’ parking problems – when they built the Matraquilla underground car park, which eliminated all the free, surface parking to make way for it… and now, there is the dreaded Blue Zoning.

Most locals understand that they live in an area where there are many public offices, but they still feel confused by the fact that the whole of the Ronda Sur has been turned into Blue Zones when the only people that used to park there were lorry drivers to pull over for a rest.

The fact is that most of these offices, such as Hacienda, are only open in the morning so why do the zoning hours continue in the afternoon? Good question…

Most have reached the conclusion that it is all about raking in the money, because the end result is that the Blue Zones and the underground car parks are standing virtually empty because people just don’t have the money to park there everyday.

The Town Hall, in the meantime, justifies this implantation by the fact that they have eliminated 120 Blue Zone spaces elsewhere, but what they don’t say is that when they say elsewhere, they mean where nobody used them and it ended up costing money.

(News: Motril, Costa Tropical Granada, Andalucia)