Nerja has a project for a new medical centre – one that has been dragging on for the last 13 years – but owing to a recent court sentence, it is looking even more distant.
It was in 2003 when the then Mayor José Alberto Armijo (PP) signed an agreement with the Junta whereby the regional government would co-finance the project putting in 50% of the total; some 2.4-million euros. The Town Hall, on the other hand, would have to build the medical centre.
The original location for the new medical centre was next to the Playa de Burriana N-340 roundabout, where the ‘temporary’ fire station presently stands.
Come 2008 and the said Mayor was insisting that the Town Hall was not obligated to build it, claiming that this was the onus of the Junta, so Sevilla asked for its money back; i.e., the 1.2-million euros that it had advanced for the project.
The Town Hall replied that they had spent 235,820 euros on ‘administrative costs,’ and only returned 1.082,089 euros. The trouble is that they could only really justify the drawing up of the project, which cost 300 euros.
Eight years later an Regional Supreme Appeals Court came down in favour of the Junta, having rejected an appeal by the previous PP-governed council before losing the elections.
At the moment the tripartite Town Council that replaced the PP one has been desperately negotiating with the Junta to find a way of making the repayment of not only the missing money, but the interest accrued (188,914 euros) giving a total of 306,824 euros.
But wait! there are still the court costs to add to the sum, all because the previous Town Council had tried to get away with short-changing the Junta.
In this latest court sentence it was established that both the Town Hall and the Junta had agreed not to use the original plot of land and that the Town Hall had offered and ceded a different plot, yet the Town Council even so failed to build the medical centre.
The present Mayor, Rosa Arrabal (PSOE), says that this affair is just one of the disagreeable surprises found upon taking over the Town Hall. For example they had to find over a million euros for the compulsory purchase of the land where the sewage-recycling plant stands, as well as 300,000 on the reorganization of the Castillo Alto industrial estate.
Mayor Arrabal says that they are in conversations with the Junta over how to pay the amount owed, as well as discussing a new location for the projected medical centre; one next to Río Chíllar. However, it is far from certain that the proposed plot is suitable because of its present development category, which needs to be changed.
(News: Nerja, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)