The First Councillor of La Herradura, Juan José Ruiz Joya, has responded to Sr. Benavides comments about the village paseo.

He pointed out that the grant for 9-million euros, which was lost, was only available on the condition of the expropriation of the terraces of many business from the Barranco de Espinar up to Peña Parda (10,200 sq/m).

Quite apart from the fact, he pointed out, that this expropriation would have ended up in the courts and would have cost the town coffers at least 10,200,000 euros in compensation, the affected businesses would have suffered economically, because of the loss of their terraces.

Furthermore the project required a return road running behind the beach road, which would have also entailed coughing up compensation money to the landowners along its course.

Summing up, he calculated that in exchange for the 9m-euro grant, the Town Hall would have had to pay out about 16m euros. And then on top of that, the Town Hall would have had to provide 65% of the building costs of the new paseo.

The result would have been an inaccessible (for vehicles) paseo and no alternative parking, together with the financial “strangulation” of the affected businesses whilst it was being built.

Councillor Ruiz Joya, however, didn’t mention the 20,000-euro artist’s impression of how the existing paseo would look after the subterranean work on its infrastructure had been concluded.

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