It appears that between 40 to 50 people of different nationalities have made an illegal encampment, albeit a temporary one, on one of Maro’s beaches.

This discovery was made by the Chairman of the Club de Pesca Deportiva La Axarquía based in Vélez-Málaga when he and two companions decided to go angling there; they were literally chased off, he claims, by a drunken Frenchman who claimed that the beach belonged to him and his companions.

It was when the Frenchman (or possibly Belgian; it’s not clear) had jumped onto their rods, breaking them, that a scuffle broke out between the three anglers, the alternative-lifestyle foreigner and his dog, which managed to bite one of the angler’s on the leg.

After the brief struggle, the angling party decided to abandon their efforts to fish and left the beach in order to avoid more trouble.

The angling-club chairman said that he was annoyed that a “hippy who is supposed to preach ‘make love, not war,’ should go out of his way to look for trouble,” he complained.

The next day, a Sunday, Luis Jiménez went to the ER at the area hospital in order to obtain a medical report on his injury (the dog bite and a bruise caused by a stone impact). He then went to the Guardia Civil post to file a complaint, but the duty policeman said that he couldn’t attend to him over this because they were short staffed.

His next step was to go the following day, on Monday, to the Town Hall and ask them to do something about the ‘beach occupation.’ The Mayor, Rosa Arrabal (PSOE), said that she lamented what had happened to the anglers and assured him that they were planning an operation to remove the illegal settlement.

And it’s not the first such operation because the Policia Local and the Guardia Civil have dismantled several such camps in several of Nerja’s small coves.

(News: Maro, Nerja, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)