It was Benny who first come up with the idea of an underwater park, littered with sunken villas and galleons, just off the beach, but then the present Mayor championed it.
Let’s face it, La Herradura and Almuñécar have some pretty impressive soggy bits and attract bubble blowers from not only across the country, but from abroad, too.
The project was entitled, The Blue Park of Underwater Life and the Town Hall had already commissioned the manufacturing the seabed real estate. However! The Ministry for Ecological Transition decided to throw a spanner in the works and the whole thing has ground to a halt.
Baschi Innovation 2021, SL had designed 148 underwater structures inspired by the three great civilisations that left their mark on Almuñécar over the centuries: Phoenician, Roman, and Arabic, with the latter hanging around for around from 711 to 1492 – which is hardly just a coffee break, right?
That was the vision: 3,000 years of history recreated in marine concrete and manufactured using 3D printing put in place between 15 and 25 meters in depth off the Playa del Muerto.
The project has a project of 900,000 euros, financed entirely with… surprise… European funds through the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
The Town Hall had visions of tourists exploring the seabed — hopefully with breathing equipment — which would be like walking… or better said, floating, through a museum, fending off the odd shark and marauding mercadona shopping bags.
But that’s not all because also this seabed ‘furnishings’ would act like an artificial reef, providing the surprised fishes with a breeding ground — what could be more romantic than an ACME concrete galley for engendering offspring, after all?
Now, this is not an original idea because other coastal towns, both in Spain and abroad have their seabed parks, but even so, it is a good idea — the jellyfish are all for it!
It was all planned to be up and running (down and static) by the end of June this year… but then a politician from a higher administration had an argument with his wife, who had deliberately burnt his toast because he spent more time with his secretary than her, so out came the rubber stamp bearing the word “Rejected!”
Mayor Ruiz Joya, “expressed his concern” over this decision taken by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, but quite honestly, what do you expect from a ministry with such a ridiculous title.
Furthermore, EU funds were now in danger – Almuñécar might be forced to hand them back!
The Mayor said that they had, “scrupulously” complied with all technical, administrative, and financial obligations required during the project’s processing, and considered that the rejection had been based on “deeply debatable interpretative criteria.”
A ministry bigwig, Jose Antonio Montilla, said that the Town Hall had simply been asked to correct certain aspects of the submitted project: “Therefore, if the Ministry has ultimately issued an unfavourable report, we understand that the modifications made did not adequately correct the detected deficiencies.”
So what is the problem? Well, the chosen site is within a protected area according to the Ministry whilst the Mayor argues that it isn’t. The Ministry says that there is a protected marine flora (Cymodocea nodosa seagrass meadow) on the site, whilst the Mayor says that its presence had not been confirmed with certainty.
They Mayor is not impressed. “We have done our job, we have complied with all demands, and we have invested hundreds of thousands of euros thinking about the future of Almuñécar and La Herradura,” Ruiz Joya stated.
The Town Council insists that the project involved no pollutant discharges or toxic materials. It uses concrete specifically formulated for the marine environment, following models successfully implemented in numerous international destinations linked to research and sustainable tourism. So there!
As the Mayor points out, there is a huge contradiction between the EU backing and funding strategies tied to the blue economy and the Central Government (read: commie gits in Madrid) puts the mockers on it.
Well, give it another 50 years and the whole of Almuñécar will be underwater anyway, so what’s the hurry, right?
(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)
Keywords: Underwater Tourist Attraction, Blue Economy, Mayor Ruiz Joya, Sunken Villas, EU Funding, Rejected
news, andalucia, granada, costa tropical, almunecar, underwater tourist attraction, blue economy, mayor ruiz joya, sunken villas, eu funding, rejected