After a year of the underground municipal market car park being closed, stallholders are angry and bitter, to say the least.

Things began to slip downhill from November 2012 when the underground parking was closed. Since then, customers have nowhere to park and trade has diminished alarmingly; so much so that many stalls have pulled down their shutters for good.

In the latest Plenary Meeting of the Town Council the two main opposition groups, CA and PSOE, banded together and stopped the governing party in its tracks.

The Mayor wants to whole market demolished and rebuilt from scratch – some claim that there is a hidden agenda involving an ‘interested party,’ whereas the CA (now fully integrated in the PA) wants a deal struck with the previous lease holder (Hermanos Garcia Motril) and to have the parking repaired without demolishing the market.

Rumour has it that, as the land on which the market sits is prime real estate, there’s a deal in the pipeline to do away with the market and build a commercial centre in its place; hence the governing party’s insistence on demolishing it.

On the other hand, most people who have followed events in Almuñécar for the last decade or so know that Hermanos Garcia Motril ended up with just about every public-works contract under the Benavides administration and that the parking lease ending up in their hands was no coincidence.

In the meantime, whilst Benavides battles with the Mayor and the PSOE and PP play to score points on a larger battlefield, the stallholders have seen their takings drop by 70%.

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