In the last Plenary Meeting of the Almuñécar Town Council a motion to apply for a semi-independent status for La Herradura was unanimously approved.

Consequently, the motion, which was put forward by the United Left party, will result in a commission being formed, comprising of ten members; two from each party. A little bit of extra income for them, bless their cotton socks.

The First Councillor for La Herradura, Juan José Ruiz Joya will be the committee chairman

The Committee has four months to come up with its findings, so that they can be presented at the next scheduled Plenary Meeting.

So what is an Entidad Local Autónoma and what difference will it make, if granted by the Junta?

The ELA is governed by a Neighbourhood Board, headed by its own mayor. The number of members on the Board must be a minimum of two, up to a third of the total councillors in the parent municipality, which in the case of Almuñécar would be seven.

So the ELA would have between two and seven Board representatives, distributed between the existing political parties according to the last municipal election results.

The ELA will have authority over and responsibility for: granting building licences, street upkeep, public lighting, street cleaning, local fiestas, rubbish collection, amongst other things. The parent Town Hall can also hand over other areas to them as it thinks fit.

Will the representatives get paid – I don’t know. If they did, would the number of paid Councillors on the parent council be reduced – I don’t know. Politicians think that money grows on trees, after all, which is why they have a penchant for scrumping, no doubt.

Spain has over 8,000 municipalities and there is reasonable talk of reducing that number, so it is a logical question to ask… does the public purse really need to finance yet another town hall, albeit a mini one?

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