The old town of Almuñécar has received at least three protection categories ranging from 1976 to the most recent in 2014 but some things need to change. At least, that is what the socialist opposition party, the PSOE, considers.

In 1976 it was given the category of Conjunto Histórico-Artístico, then as a Bien de Interés Cultural in 1985 and then inscribed in the catalogue of Historic Andalusian Heritage in 2014, which is why you can’t swing a pickaxe up there without being fined until your eyes bleed.

But there are things that need changing up on the 62-hectares of land that comprise of the Casco Histórico de Almuñécar and that is something that anybody who has taken a panoramic photograph in Spain can tell you… damn cables ruin the shot.

OK, normally, it’s HT cables on pylons over valleys or even telephone lines crossing picturesque scenery, but in the case of the old town, it’s the electricity cables that barely cling to facades or loop across from one side of a photographically promising, narrow street to the next.

The local, party Spokeswoman for the PSOE, Rocío Palacios, says that instead of embellishing the beauty of the old town, the Town Hall has permitted cobweb of electricity cables to spread and blemish the view. It’s not only Endesa/Sevillana cables that are causing problems but more so the telecommunication companies that are quite happy to string cables, one on top of the other, and adorn their junction boxes with publicity for their own companies.

She feels that it is incomprehensible that home owners up there must obtain special permission for the Board of Cultura to alter the facade in the slightest way, yet telephone companies can drape cables along whole streets with seeming impunity.

For this reason, in the next Plenary Meeting of the Town Council a motion will be presented and hopefully approved to force telephone companies “to replace the existing cable in accord with the aesthetics of the old town.”

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