Murcia on the case

Aurelio Murcia, Popular Liberal and Centrist Union, says that Bigastro has been paying for street cleaning out of the budget for rubbish collection. He claims this has been going on since 2008 and amounts to about 500,000 euros that we have paid wrongly though our water bills.

During the period from 2008 until now there have been three mayors; José Joaquín Moya who was followed by Raúl Valerio Medina when Moya was arrested and the current mayor, Charo Bañuls. Murcia claims that the malpractice started with Joaquín Moya  and was continued by Valerio Medina. Rather cleverly though he says that the current mayor may not have been aware of the situation during the first two years of her tenure.  Smart because we recall that he was deputy mayor at that time.

Since his expulsion as deputy mayor, Murcia has requested four times that the rate we pay for rubbish collection be changed  taking out the cost of street cleaning which he claims should be paid from the council budget. He goes on to point out that the rate we pay for rubbish collection should also be amended to take account of the 300 houses that are no longer exempt from paying local taxes. As he quite rightly says, the cost of the service has to be divided by the number of homes included and with 300 more, we should all pay a little less.

Those of us who live at Villas Andrea can claim a further injustice. For nine years we were charged 50 euros rather than 35 euros the rest of the town paid. Although we now pay the corrected rate, we were not offered a refund for the overpayment. On that basis, the chances of any of us seeing a refund of our part of the 500,000 euros are nil!