When you think of ‘an overcrowed pub’ it’s hard to imagine how packed a pub is with almost five times its maximum permitted capacity. This happed in Íllora.

Forget the present pandemic but just think of how you could evacuate quickly if there were a fire in a pub with a maximum legal capacity of 40 customers actually containing 196 people.

This happened in a pub located in Alomartes, which is a municipal dependency of Loja, in the early hours of last Saturday.

Even if there had been no Covid limitations as the province is on Level Two and the pub could run at a maximum capacity of 77, it would still be way over double the permitted occupancy.

The business owners face five whopping fines as the infringements are considered as ‘serious:’ exceeding maximum occupation capacity, using a terrace without a licence and no licence for a DJ event, amongst other infringements.

The Policía Local requested back up from the Guardia Civil in case there was any trouble getting the people inside to leave, but there were no problems in the end.

As can be expected, several neighbours phoned in to report the excessive noise at that hour of the morning, so it is hard to see how the proprietors thought that they could get away with it, during these times of the pandemic – perhaps they didn’t, but calculated that even with being fined it was economically viable to flaunt the law.

And of course, we live in an era of social media so there are numerous video uploads where you can plainly see people dancing, jammed together, with no masks, which doesn’t help the pub’s case, even if they hadn’t been caught in fraganti. Neither does it help that it is not the first time they have been fined for ‘over-packing;’ in July last year the Guardia Civil fined them. To make it worse, they were also fined a few days ago for having a DJ hosting an event when he should have been in self quarantine after having been in direct contact with an infected person.

Such is the public indignation that the Íllora Policía Local has made a request before the Town Hall for the pub to be closed down because of these five infringements. It’s not clear whether that is temporarily or permanently.

(News: Alomartes, Loja, Poniente de Granada, Andalucia)