Time to reflect

Tonight

Tonight, the Juvenile Court, the Infant Court and the Third Age Queen will attend their first official function at the Fiesta for Santa Ana.

Another hot one

My photo tribute to Francisco Grau Vegara

Born in Bigastro, Alicante, Francisco Grau started playing instruments in the Bigastro band at the age of seven. Later, he went on to compose more than 700 pieces and since 12 October 1997, he has been the official author of the Spanish National Anthem (previously Marcha Granadera). He was also a member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, the Real Academia de la Virgen de la Arrixaca in Murcia and the Academia de San Carlos in Valencia. From 1988, he was the director of music for the Spanish Royal Guard and was the Director of the Spanish Military Academy of Music since its creation. From 1988 – 2008, he was also director of the Musical Unit of the Spanish Royal Guard. In January 2008, Grau became the first General of Music in the Spanish Armed Forces, having been made a colonel some years previously.

He was too young

The sad news last night was that Francisco Grau had passed away. He was born in January 1947 which made him almost exactly the same age as me - 72.

The Alcaldesa has declared two days of official mourning from midnight tonight until midnight on Wednesday.

Flags on official buildings  in the town will be flown at half mast. 

Going to the beach?

Be aware that the sea will be rough today. 

Biker's lunch

Chaos

It used to be chaotic at departures at Elche Alicante Airport. You could park up there free of charge and so people used to avoid the fees in the main car park.

Then they installed barrier gates and you were restricted to 15 minutes. That worked well and it was usually possible to find a space even at peak times.

We take our car to the airport and use a company called Plane Parking. The deals is that you drop your car off at departures and they take it away to their compound. When you return, you phone up and they bring the car back to departures.

The problem is that people are back to abusing the system and are parking at departures to pick passengers up. On a number of occasions, the barrier gates have been left open to try and avoid the chaos but that means that they can park for longer.

When we came back on Monday it was mayhem, not a space to be had and you could see that none of the parked cars had people in them. Plane Parking had to bring our car back to the lane reserved for taxis.

We missed it all

Pam and I have just spent the last week in Sale with our grandchildren. I understand we missed another day of suffering heat and two earthquakes.

Now that is hot!!

Was that fibre cable?

Yesterday, we saw workmen who looked to be installing cable in the telephone ducting. Surely, this must be the fibre optic cable that we were promised.

The Town Hall celebrates 75 years

Many thanks to Pascual Segura for this fascinating account.

Until the 1940s, Bigastro Town Hall was located at number 12 in the Plaza de la Constitución, a space that today is occupied by a modern building of housing and commercial premises. The poor condition of that old building of 165 m2, which included the jail and open courtyard, led to the consistory commission in 1942 to the two expert masons, Joaquin Moya Martinez and José Alcaina Esteban, a report on the state of municipal buildings .

The report, presented in 1943, ruled the poor state in which they were, and for that reason the mayor, Manuel Fuentes Torres, made the decision to auction all the municipal properties to deal with the acquisition of a space that would serve as new Town Hall.

Thanks to the money raised from the auctions, the house of the then secretary of the Town Hall of Bigastro, Juan Gálvez Gálvez, was purchased for 40,000 pesetas, commissioning the project of adaptation of said house to the architect Severiano Sánchez Ballesta, who approved the acquisition of the property affirming that "the structure of the building, its architectural style and the consistency of its walls and work in general, are well designed".

In August of that same year of 1943 they began works that culminated in December to adapt the house of the secretary to a Town Hall, with offices, court, archive, plenary hall, etc. In June 1944 the building was ready for the workers to make use of their facilities.

From June 1944 until today 75 years have passed. A work of adaptation of an old house to which subsequent rehabilitation works followed.

Over the course of those 75 years, Bigastro has travelled a path of prosperity, improvements in infrastructure and services, social and cultural advances, etc. A path that prospers with a newly named Municipal Corporation, which has as its Mayor-President, Teresa María Belmonte Sánchez and the councillors Antonio José Meseguer Cabañés, Alejandra Moya Celedonio, José Manuel Maíquez Moya, Nuria Andreu Mompeán, Manu Giménez Terrés, Teresa Moya Moya, Mª Carmen Medina Oltra, Raúl Martínez Campos, Olga Soto Pardo, Joaquín Sáez López, Nora Taj Lidón and Aurelio Murcia González, to the municipal representatives in charge of protecting this anniversary.