Motril has lost its cinema… again – it’s becoming a bit of a habit. This time it is the one in the Centro de Desarrollo Turístico.

After a year on hold it began to project films in March after the facilities was put up for bidding. The company that won the management lease also put on shows, as well as films, but to no avail. People were just not interested enough to make the effort to go there.

OK, it is a 3-day camel trek and a packed lunch, being as it is, not far from the port, so it is not as if you can stroll down there from the centre of town, but even so…

Well, the company threw in the towel, packed up, and left. The Councillor for Culture, Alicia Crespo, explained, “they could not alter the contract terms which obligated them to open the cinema from Thursday to Sunday,” adding that the Town Hall agreed to terminate the lease because it was just not economically viable for the company.

There were, on average, only 8.5 spectators per film. One of the blockbuster films that they managed to screen cost the company 9,000 euros to hire but only 30 people went to see it.

Now all hopes are on the new shopping centre next to Al Campo where the new Burger King is. The cinema there will have five small theatre meaning that if there is a very popular film showing, it can been screened in all fives simultaneously, if needs be.

The cinema space in the Centro de Desarollo Turístico will not be reopened as a cinema – who would take it on if it were? The fact is that this controversial building, costing several million euros, was the baby of the previous Partido-Popular-led Town Council and has been a disaster from the day that it opened its doors.

But even so, you can’t just lock a place like that up and forget about it, so they will lease out the cinema theatre for live shows: concerts and plays.

Anybody who has been here for more than a dog watch will remember the old cinema that was just a bit further up from the old Radiovision shop. After that was shut down there was a multi-cinema at the top of Avenida de Salobreña, which went broke.

The fact is that multi-sala cinemas only work as an added attraction in a shopping centre; somewhere for husbands to hide whilst their wives ransack the shops. Even then, they run at a loss, but as they are there just to get people in through the shopping-centre doors it doesn’t matter.

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