We are paying for democracy big time

I have said this before but it bears repeating - in my opinion, many municipalities in Spain are just too small to be self run organisations. When less than 30 votes can make the difference between one party being in charge or another you have a crazy political situation. Decisions in Bigastro are made by a group as small as 7 politicians who hold control.

A mere handful of councillors can and have decided in the past upon lavish plans for new facilities in the town all paid for with borrowed money.

I remember going down to an exhibition in the newly built auditorium where a lot of money had been spent on a display showing us just what the council had achieved. The promotion also set out their further plans to develop the town including an aparthotel right on our doorstep.

Apart from the inconvenience of having a massive building project right by our house, we knew that there was no way that a hotel was going to succeed here. Who on earth was going to trundle up the country road from the town to stay and play golf? Just where in Bigastro are the tourist facilities that were going to attract these visitors? Even the main town square lacks the attraction of neighbouring towns. It has a road running through it and an apartment block with its bottom storey half bricked up, painted white and left unoccupied. The other half is an almost completed but still unoccupied showroom. At the other end of the square are two vacant plots on the corners surrounded by steel fencing. In any ones eyes, this is not what you would call an attractive centre to the town.

The main shopping street has been re cobbled and paved but is already looking as dingy in parts as the previous road surface and is a darn sight harder to walk on.

If Bigastro was like picture postcard Guadalest, things would be different but it isn’t thank goodness otherwise we would suffer the congestion that tourist towns suffer in the summer months. This is a sleepy town with an industrial estate where people work, proud of its traditions but still very local. It should have no pretentions to be a tourist town.

Now that Bigastro is in a mess, it is going to be hard to get out of it and again the size of the town mitigates against that happening anytime soon.

The mayor of Moia speaks of the death of the ayuntamiento, in the situation we face at the moment, that may not be such a bad thing.