On the 1st of October Correos announced that they would no longer be delivering to the Orgiva dependency of Las Barreras – *Gasp!*

The reason that the posties were unwilling to deliver letter there was because the house numbering was almost nonexistent.

The Post Office wants the name of the street at the beginning of each one and the official number over the door – not a lot to ask for, one could surmise.

As for post boxes, they must be fixed to the wall beside the front door, as stipulated by the Royal Decree 1829/11999 and not half way down a barranco, attached to a tree or a passing dog.

Now, 300 people live in Las Barreras, huddled in the street dwellings or in the main square, La Concordia, but there are streets with no visible name and some houses are bereft of a number. But whose fault is that?

Well, it’s the Órgiva Town Hall’s fault because the task of making sure that the streets and houses are adequately marked according to their postal address is theirs.

People also live in outlying cortijos and a great many of them foreigners who have post boxes at the entrance to the village, which is not far from the old ham-drying building.

According to one resident, the villagers have never had any problems receiving their mail, but now Correos has decided cease mail delivery until further notice. Furthermore, the postmen of old knew everybody’s name and where they lived, but now there is a high turn over of postal workers who never have time to learn who lives where before they are moved on.

Well, as you might imagine the locals have been banging down the Town Hall front door, demanding to know what is happening.

(News: Las Barreras, Orgiva, Alpujarra, Granada, Andalucia)