The Spokesman for the Motril Branch of Andalucía Por Sí, David Martín, won't be sending any Christmas cards to the Mayor, judging by his acidic observations.
Councillor Martin was not impressed by the fiestas line up for live-music entertainment, in fact, he considers that the Mayor wasn’t either, which is way she didn’t inaugurate the fiestas week, as is normally the case for somebody in the Mayor’s seat.
He said, “without offending any of the acts who would be appearing, the fiestas have only been saved by the Federico Moreno Torroba’s zarluela [operetta] La Caramba, without forgetting Aquaviva organised by Antonio Peralta.”
The councillor added that whilst the Mayor was capable of inaugurating a square metre of side walk for a photo op, but did not show her face at the opening of the fiestas in the municipal fairground.
“Luisa, our Mayor, is verging on the absurd when she says that her administration has not spent more on the fiestas because her priority was attending to the demands of social services,” he said, adding that the Mayor was using this municipal service as a “human shield” reasoning, “we don’t believe that Motril has more necessities than Almuñécar or Salobreña or Torrenueva, where they have held top-level concerts, not only during the fiesta week, but also throughout summer.”
He went on (and on) to point out that the Mayor’s team was one of the most expensive to run in the history of Motril Town Hall, owing to the number of Vice-Mayors on the payroll – there are seven. Whilst she was claiming that no more could be spent on the fiestas because of more pressing needs, he said, she had taken on two new councillors on her board of councillors, thus having to pay two more generous salaries, their Social Security payments, slapping a further 65,000 euros onto the expenses.
He added with ponderous sarcasm, “We don’t know if when she paid her personal court costs out of municipal funds (allotted to her party) she had been thinking about the Social Welfare needs of Motril, as well.”
He wound up a litany of criticism by pointing out that the cancelled Plácido Domingo concert has still a lot of outstanding ticket-sale returns to make owing to the complexity of the system imposed by the Town Hall to recuperate funds. According to Town Hall records there are still 800 people out of the 1,500 who had bought tickets for the concert, who have been unable to recuperate their money.
But his last parting shot was probably the most barbed when he pointed out that Councillor Antonio Escámez had demanded Councillor for Fiestas head on a platter, belonging to the previous administration because of the paltry summer fiestas programme.
The said councillor had only a month to organise them and without any funds in the Municipal Budget because the Escámez’s outgoing administration had left no funds for the summer fiestas.
The previous Mayor, Flor Almón, had complied and sacked the councillor because of the vociferous demands from the outgoing Mayor (who is today’s present mayor). “We are not going to demand resignations from the present Councillor for Fiestas but we are going to remind Mayor Luisa García Chamorro, that even with fewer funds, ex-Mayor Flor Almón managed to provide a better fiestas, line up than the present one.
(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)