The Town Hall of Atarfe, on the outskirts of the City of Granada, has fallen foul of the banks, who have stepped in and embargoed the town’s pride and joy; the bullring.

This came about because the Town Hall used the building as a loan security for a 7.5m-euro loan. The first default on the six-monthly payments came in March 2011, followed by another repayment default in September of that same year… not good.

At this point the bank, Banco Santander, took the Town Hall to court, reclaiming the 7,379.872 euros lent and 2,200,000 euros in costs. Ouch! So the Town Hall either comes up with nearly 10m euros or it can kiss goodbye to the bullring, El Coliseo, and an assortment of other properties that were also put up as a loan security

The Coliseo Ciudad de Atarfe began to go up around the middle of 2002. It was designed as a multi-functional venue with an original budget of 2.733,388 euros. However, the budget was raised in 2006 to 4.230,932 euros a year after it was inaugurated.

Quite apart from the bullfights, it has been used as a venue for Deep Purple, Leonard Cohen and Mark Knopfler concerts.

But all is not lost because a businessman has offered to pay off the debt in exchange for this publicly owned property. Javier de la Rosa has offered to pay off the 9.6m-euro debt in exchange for owning the said bullring on the condition that there would be no restriction of events held there, including bullfights.

You see the left-wing Mayor, Francisco Rodríguez Quesada, had already declared the he would not be authorising any bullfights there or any other event that indulges in the suffering of animals.

(News: Atarfe, Vega de Granada, Granada, Andalucia)