The Almuñécar Councillor for Employment, Beatriz González, announced that the Town Hall would be providing free English classes, for the unemployed.

The Town will be doing this through the Academia Fénix from the 7th to the 28th of next month using the Casa de La Cultura. Classes will be from 09.30h to 11.30h, Monday to Friday.

Now, why on earth would we be telling our English-speaking readers about this? You are already proficient in English, either because it is your native language or because you have studied it and become fluent.

The answer is because the private, language academies in Almuñécar, as well as the private teachers giving classes from home or at their students homes, pay their municipal taxes and struggle economically. What they don’t need is for the Town Hall to use their tax contributions to provide competition for them.

It’s the same when the Town Hall comes up with the Fería de Día during the time when the fair comes to town and hogs the town’s main parking area where the Friday/Sunday markets are held, putting it out of action for three weeks in August, precisely when the town is bursting with tourists and parking is most needed.

Restaurants, mesones and bars, struggle throughout the year, taking out bank loans to make ends meet, waiting for the ever-decreasing-in-duration, summer season to come, only for the fairground bars, run by political parties and Semana-Santa brotherhoods, to skim off any trade.

Never mind, they think; there’s the trade during the day. Wrong, because the Town Hall sets up the Feria de Día, consisting temporary bars belonging to political parties and Semana-Santa brotherhoods again, to skim off the daytime trade as well.

Even the money spent in the fairground on attractions goes into pockets of a business that has nothing to do with the local economy, so not one penny spent during the summer fair actually goes towards the struggling local businesses.

Whether it’s free English Classes to seemingly scupper the municipality’s private academies or August Ferias to strangle the hostelry sector, the very institution that should exist to promote the local economy seemingly does its best to trip it up.

Yes, in this case, they are using one local academy to the detriment of the rest, but would it not be better to finance classes individually: register those interested and arrange with all the academies (there aren’t that many) to provide the required number of hours for the said course.

(Editorial: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

Keywords: Unfair Competition?, Language Academies, Town Hall, The Unemployed, Free Course

editorial, andalucia, granada, costa tropical, almunecar, unfair competition?, language academies, town hall, the unemployed, free course