Did you notice that Salobreña doesn't have operative blue zones on the beach road nor has had during the whole of summer?

You probably haven’t been anywhere near any beach along the Costa Tropical since bulging lunacy was installed but the case is that Salobreña, even though it had every intention of getting the paseo blue zones working, it never happened.

In fact, last year there were no operative blue zone down there because of the pandemic with its travelling restrictions keeping the menancing hordes vehicles away – the onus was on making as much room as possible for pedestrians to stroll whilst maintaining their distance from each other.

The first time that this paid-parking system came into being in Salobreña was in 2014 and suprisingly, there was no furore, not breast beating – not a sausage!

Normally during the high season, the parking meters were chortling in glee from 10.00h and 21.00h every day of the week, all the way up to the 15th of September. This summer, some of these undernourished and ignored tyrants have been covered up and some even removed.

Now, there are two groups who are not pleased with this, one consists of opposition parties (surprise”) and the other the chiringuitos, whose customers can’t park because the lucky drivers who do find a parking spot won’t move their cars until the sun goes down. With the blue zone working, there was a maximum-stay limit.

Mas Tropical’s local spokesman, Juan Collado, flagelates his own back in grief over the money that the municipal coffers are missing out on and the chaos.

So, why is the paseo blue zone not working? Because, according to Más Tropical, the governing party has slipped up big time by not getting the contract conditions published and the contract assigned to a private entity to run.”They’ve had four years to get it done,” he complained.

The spokesman for the chiringuito association Cost Tropical, Antonio Fuentes, observed; “It’s a good job that the foreigners haven’t seen this year, because that would scare them away.”

Editorial comment: oh yes, everybody with a strange accent is reduced to quaking wrecks when confronted by free parking, Mr Fuentes. No matter that foreigners generally take a taxi and leave the car at home when going out for a meal, so that they can enjoy a bottle of wine along with their meal.

So, what are your thoughts?

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