The Zaidín street market was supposed to set up yesterday at its new location on Calle Baden Powell, alongside the river (near Carrefour) but trouble was afoot.

Early in the morning a convoy of white vans belonging to stall holders turned up, but not one of the 150 traders unloaded their goods. They were not happy that after thirteen years they had been ordered to move the market from their usual spot on Calle Torre de la Pólvora.

The problem is that the traders consider the new location to be totally inadequate, with market-stall plots far too small in some parts. There is no room for vans to manoeuvre in order to unload, either.

Soon two representatives of the Town Hall turned up and made the rounds, making a note of the problems: the stall plot at the entrance is so small that if the trader parks to unload, nobody else can access the market to do the same and stalls are jammed so close together that if there is an emergency, it will be chaos evacuating the market.

It appears that the people in the Town Hall who decided on the new location haven’t the foggiest idea of how a market is set up and taken down. In the meantime, a police van squeezes past and only manages it because nobody has set up their stall.

The Councillor for Citizen Safety, Raquel Ruz, under whose department the market comes, considers that a market on Calle Baden Powell is ideally situated and provides great trading possibilities, further saying that it is an ample area and does not disturb anybody as the stalls are over 100 metres from the nearest housing.

The siting of the market at the old locations, she says, on Calle Torre de Pólvora and Calle Marqués de Burgos, was only meant to be provisional but it had been there for 13 years, one Saturday after the other. Residents there complained about the congestion and noise.

She says that she had been very attentive to the complaints from the traders and that her department had made “titantic efforts” for the location to be ready for the first Saturday market. She also considers that it was only a small group of traders that had prevented the rest from setting up.

On the other hand, the Chairman of the Neighbourhood Assocation of Nuevo Zaidín, Carlos Aranda, expressed his support for the market stall holders saying whereas the Councillor claims that the nearest housing is 100 metres away, they are in fact only 25 metres away (Edifício Europa II, which is situated on a nearby roundabout). He also pointed out that should there be a fire, nobody can evacuate the street safely.

Editorial comment: it is very easy to see this as a hasty decision taken to garner votes amongst those residents complaining at the original location, rather than a well thoughy out move.

(News: City & Metropolitan Area, Granada, Andalucia – Photo & Orginal Article: Ideal)