This time it is Motril that has had enough of night bars failing to control their customers, where many times no masks are worn or social distancing kept. A chiringuito beach club has already been fined for this.

But it is not only bars but street, bottle parties that are the problem; the Policía Local had to break one up in a park near Playa Granada last weekend.

For the above reason, the Councillor for Citizen Safety, Mara Escámez, will be deploying the department’s 90 police officers to patrol the town’s hotspots come the evening and especially in the early morning. In other words, during the day they are on beach duty making sure that social distancing is maintained and mask use is observed and when nightfall arrives, they patrol parks, nightlife areas like Las Explanadas as well as the chiringuitos on the beaches.

In order to be able to do this, all leave has been postponed until after the summer.

Botellones
Bottle parties held in the open air were forbidden two years ago but this gathering of youngsters from their teens to their early 30s persists. Motril in fact once operated its own botellódromo where these gatherings could take place in order to stop spontaneous ones erupting elsewhere and causing problems with neighbours and creating a mound of rubbish. It didn’t work so two years ago they closed it down and starting fining participants in such activities.

Fines of between 300 and several thousand euros were handed out to curtail the yearly gatherings along the Paseo Balduino -which runs between Playa del Poniente and Playa Granada every weekend. Since then, the bottle parties have been smaller and more hidden away in public parks and gardens.

This summer we’re not just talking about stopping 12-year olds getting smashed or streets of discarded plastic bottles and broken glass ones, but rather the spread of Covid-19, which is why uniformed and plainclothes police, from both the municipal police and the Policia Nacional are cracking down.

Of course, it is not only Motril that is struggling with this kind of nocturnal activity but also Almuñécar, for instance, where the police had to break up two bottle parties on the beachfront paseos of Puerta del Mar and San Cristóbal; in the former about 50 people had gathered resulting in six fines being issued.

Editorial comment: teenagers have always been rebels, generation after generation, so that conformity is the polar opposite of being “cool” (which has become and “uncool” word). Everybody gets that. What is the point of being the hostage of your hormones if you cannot taunt the establishment in front of your peers, after all.

But we’re not talking about bucking the rules, thumbing your nose at the old foggies – we’re talking about crashing the economy – it’s as simple as that.

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