The CA in Almuñécar accused the PP Mayor of sabotaging a meeting in the Centro Cívico where Herradura villagers could have their say on independence on the 18th of last month.

There’s a couple of things to unpack here, so let’s kick off with who the CA is. These party initials can be confusing but essentially Convergencia Andaluza is Juan Carlos Benavides. Secondly, the Mayor, Juan José Ruiz Joya, used to be the PP First Councillor for Herradura when Trinidada Herrera was the Mayoress; in other words, he was the  top man in all Herradura affairs.

Next, the village did have its own independence party, which managed to get representatives onto the Town Council, whose votes decided whether the village would fall to Benavides or the PP. This independence movement had come into being during the mid 80s and by the Municipal Elections of 1991 the Plataforma por la Independencia de La Herradura (PIHL) secured their seats led by Juan Jesús Mora Barbero. Not a very popular man, by the way.

By the elections of 2003 they had shot their bolt and lost representation and after a decision from the Spanish High Court, any chance of independence from Almuñécar was lost. 

However, in 2006 a committee to look into a semi-indepenence arrangement known as an Entidad Local Autónoma (ELA)  presided over by none other than Juan José Ruiz Joya; an up-and-coming figure in the PP ranks. However, they never actually assembled much less got anything done, apparently.

Then in 2010, a group of politically active youngsters founded an association called Los jóvenes de La Herradura por la segregación, but went nowhere, so the villagers got on with living side-by-side with the Almuñequeros.

Back to the present, the time for this meeting in Herradura, as requested, was set for 09.15h. But villagers, who had wanted to be present, couldn’t be… as at that time they are all at work. 

The CA claims that this time was deliberately set to be awkward but the fact is that all parties agreed some time ago to hold Extraordinary Plenary Meetings in the morning and the Ordinary Plenary Meetings on the last Thursday of the month in the afternoon.

Furthermore, all plenary meetings are recorded before a camera and retransmitted, so you don’t have to be physically present to follow it, nor can members of the audience do anything other than witness the meeting and can’t intervene.

So, what is the take-home from this? Juan Carlos Benavides didn’t even attend the meeting, which was organised by a group of young villagers (in their 30s and 40s) to take the temperature of the water as far as an ELA was concerned. Plenty of posturing but little substance.

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

Keywords: Meeting, Villagers, Centro Cívico, CA, Benavides, PP, Juan Jose Ruiz Joya, Mora, PIHL, ELA

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