Almuñécar Town Hall approved a project for a new municipal market earlier this month in a Extraordinary Meeting of the Town Council.

This meeting was the first ‘presential’ one in ten months as during the pandemic it was always held in the form of a video conference.

The voting was far from unanimously in favour as the opposition parties, Convergencia Andaluza (Benavides) and the PSOE socialists abstained. This surprised the Mayor because she was fully expecting them to return a negative vote and said as much afterwards.

Both these parties have always been against the planned demolition and its replacement but it appears that they just wanted to get the market project put into motion after nine years of wrangling – any market is better than no market, perhaps.

A modification to the 2021 budget was also approved so that it could include the 5.8m euros needed to build the market.

So how do the PSOE and CA really feel about it all? Well, they proposed an amendment to the motion for the approval of the project, stipulating that the whole project should be sent to the Board of Culture and Historical Heritage belonging to the Junta de Andalucia for approval because you can’t turn a spade in Almuñecar without digging up some archeaological remains. However this ammendment was rejected by the Mayor.

The Mayor claims that the limit to the historical boundary of the town’s urban area lies along Avenida Cala (that’s the one that runs alongside the old market building), whereas the opposition consider that the market area is included.

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