Work on Almuñécar’s Plaza de Madrid was supposed to be concluded before the end of June – it is now Friday the 4th and the work is far from finished. And the first weekend of July begins this evening…

When the work was first announced the promise of it being finished before the summer began was greeted with much skepticism, and who could have blamed the locals? Almuñécar has a track record of major construction work severing thoroughfare streets for months – sometimes years, past projected completion dates.

The Paseo del Altillo work to build the underground car park there was a veritable disaster, driving businesses out of existence as the gaping crater dragged on for literally years.

Then came the Avenida de don Juan Carlos I with the hotel and underground car park constructions – what was supposed to be a few months of one winter dragged on and on.

You would have thought that the Town Hall would have learned its lesson after these two atrocious episodes, but no, because then the Paseo de San Cristobal and Velilla were simultaneously put out of action for years…

And now this.

The Town Hall and Comunidad de Costa Tropical alleged that the work had to be carried out immediately because of health reasons, which produced more than a few raised eyebrows.

Why not wait until after summer, people asked – surely it’s not that urgent, and more to the point, if it were, how come it got to this state where people’s health is in imminent danger that building work cannot be put off just four months?

And then, of course, you see where the flat cobblestones have already been laid and you notice that – surprise, surprise – previous parking spaces have ‘disappeared.’

Yet another disaster just when the town is in desperate need of all the tourist trade it can get!

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