Meeting: 30th January

The meeting of Ciudadanos Europeos de Mojácar was held at the Hotel Continental yesterday.
The meeting was opened by Carlos Blanco and Lenox Napier was the first speaker. Lenox reminded those present to get onto the padrón and the voting register. The message, he said, really goes to those Mojácar residents not present today, as there are a large number of people living here who are not registered. The government will be making registration compulsory later this year.
Lenox explained the lack of ‘ideologies from the thirteen local parties in the last elections’, pointing out that there were, for example, three different PP parties, with the PP, the PAL (whose leader, the mayor of El Ejido, remains in gaol after three months) and the GIAL. He remembered the Mojacar Nuevo party, whose leader managed to divide the foreign vote without achieving anything of much use, and has since disappeared. He also broached the subject of a new political lobby which wants all the foreigners to vote for the same group (possibly a group which their Spanish champion used to represent) and whose principal ‘idea’ is to promote tourism. Lenox argued that ‘residential tourism’ (as it’s called for some reason) needs to be the key investment here as Benidorm is an example of a well-served tourist destination and Mojácar clearly is not. ‘We settlers’, he argued, ‘put money into the community all year round, and spend a lot on a house, a car and so on – incomparably more than a tourist’. Lenox discussed the function of a mayor – to represent and speak for his/her community, which, he said, the mayoress of Mojácar has failed to do, noting her behaviour during the Mojácar fire last summer (a bit like George Bush and Katrina).
Angel Medina, the councillor for tourism and culture, after a brief introduction in English, switched to Spanish. He was translated by Virginia Heyman.
Angel said that Ciudadanos Europeos de Mojácar was the only local party that had meetings with the public during the four-year legislation and that the other parties only tuned in to the community just before elections. He said that this year’s budget was 8 million, down from last year’s 12 million which was, in turn, down from the year before’s 20 million euros. Of this, between wages and basic running costs, and assuming a 100% collection on local taxes (!) there would be around one million euros only this year for road repairs, culture, tourism and so on. Angel said that this year, he had spent 6,500 euros at the Fitur tourist fair in Madrid to promote Mojácar, against the 80,000 euros spent by the previous tourist councillor at Fitur two years before. Angel’s talk was about the small local things that the party, with only one councillor, was able to do. Helping the British library, supporting several local British clubs, including the British Legion, the Dames in Spain, the Club de Toros de Mojácar and the Anglican Church etc. Cleaning and repaving streets, organising concerts and exhibitions, installing three electric information panels in Spanish and English (at the pueblo, the fuente and the Parque Comercial), and so on.
Angel has been working on a regular bus route from Almería airport to Mojácar, and a new multi-use public energy-efficient building with a conference room, an artists’ residence, an archaeological studio, offices for cultural uses etc to be built at the medical centre on the beach. A new medical centre will be built near the petrol station. A bus station would also be built there.
To illustrate the weakness of one councillor in a government, he told the Spanish joke of a councillor from Cuenca caught and fined in Madrid for speeding. The man from Cuenca tells the policeman ‘I’m a councillor from Cuenca’ and the policeman replies ‘here in Madrid, a councillor from Cuenca ain’t worth a shit’. The man sadly answers ‘he ain’t worth a shit in Cuenca either’.
But with two or three councillors…
The panel took questions on various topics.
Albert Schröter (a councillor in the town hall) and Bill Campbell (spokesperson for La Paratá urbanisation) were in the audience of around eighty people.
Our thanks to Alan Sykes for providing the microphones and sound equipment and to Gaspár from the Hotel Continental.