It seems that a couple have set up camp or temporary shelter on the TH1 (where the hotels are supposed to go) in Salobreña.

The jerry-built shelter, built using plastic and pallets, is a far cry from the hotels that are supposed to go up there; something that has been in the pipeline for 20-odd years.

The Town Hall urbanised about 100,000 sq/m in 2018 of what used to be sugarcane fields ready for the hotels that Salobreña was lacking but along came Covid, amongst other things and the whole thing is dead in the water… except for the couple who have made it their home, it seems.

Now the residents of this camp are not an alternative-life-style couple as the woman is trained as a teacher and the man is an administrative assistant who had come to Salobreña in 2021. They found a ramshackle house on Calle Antequera near the castle and all went well except for one neighbour.

The couple had wanted to buy the house, which belonged to a bank (repossessed) and buy it little-by-little but the said neighbour was against it. Then came several years of litigation with a case in Motril law court until one day a mysterious fire destroyed it; they had returned home to find it in flames and they lost everything they had inside.

They were homeless and spent several nights sleeping on park benches. Then a German woman who was heading back home gave them her tent which was already set up. They finally ended up on the TH1.

The woman just wants a home, to pay rent, have the luxury of running water and electricity, but it is still out of their reach. The Town Hall, they claim, refuses to enrol them on the municipal register (empadronarse)

Where they are now is where a small cortijo used to stand (probably an apero) and the concrete base remains, so they have that as a floor at least. The woman says that they are doing no harm to anybody and they only want to ‘survive’ (sobrevivir).

They do get visitors at night, from wild boar, which rummage through anything they have outside.

It is worth reading the original source article, by MJ Arrebola in the Ideal/Photo Javier Martin, if you have an online subscription.

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

Keywords: Encampment, Ramshackle House, Calle Antequera, Destroyed by Fire, TH1, Jerry-built shelter

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