I had delivered magazines to the Motril Tourist Information Office and was chatting with Roberto when he mentioned the nearby fire.

He said with heavy irony, “isn’t it a coincidence that when the wind gets up there’s a fire on the empty land next to the park.”

Just by the number of small fires amongst wild cane, un loco was behind it, of the pyromaniac variety, he considered.

So, I went down to where fire personnel were damping down the ashes of the burnt cane next to the road and asked one of them what time it had started and he responded that it was around 11.45h.

He joked with a companion that somebody had wanted to clear the land of vegetation and couldn’t be bothered to do it the hard way.

All joking aside there have been far too many seemingly deliberate fires in Motril and on the Salobreña vega, and it always seems to coincide when the weather reports forecast high winds.

This latest fire, by the way, is on the patch of land where the new hotel is supposed to go up on the Avenida de La Constitución, between the Tourist Information office and the Cepsa gasolinera,

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