Spanish Shilling

The photo comes from one of those hopeful Spanish magazines that circulated in the eighties, magazines in English but firmly controlled by Spanish writers and editors. After all, who knows more about the expats than the experts? The mag was called Mediterranean Magazine and was sold at 300 Ptas, a sort of journeyman's version of Lookout.
Issue Nº 2 appeared in June 1987 and it ran an article about Mojácar titled: 'Mojácar, from conflict to dialogue, by Juan de Dios Mellado. The beautiful town of Mojácar has gone through hard times. Several controversial issues led the foreign residents to openly confront the municipal authorities, but a dialogue has now been reached'.
Juan, by the way, remains an expert on tourism and is featured in an article in La Opinion de Málaga recently on the publication of his book, 'Los Años Dorados de la Costa del Sol'.
Juan Morales was the mayor in those days (champion of the first moción de censura in Mojácar's turbulent political history). On the foreigners' discontent with the Town Hall's plans he says: 'Maybe at first there were communication problems on our part', he admitted, 'but it wasn't our fault. A lot of these resident foreigners live off to themselves. When we've called them to meetings, they haven't bothered showing up'. The two issues of the time were the construction of a Paseo Marítimo (now half finished and looking remarkably good, but with the new powers of the ecologists, it's unlikelt that it will ever be completed) and the so-called ring-road through the urbanisations on the beach which was, at the time, planned to take heavier traffic, particularly Carboneras industrial trucks, through the area quickly to connect with the future motorway to Cartagena. This as we know, has been successfully stymied by the local residents now for over 25 years.
The article continues with a hopeful note: 'Juan Morales greets foreigners who have lived in Mojácar for years: 'It's possible that now, with the foreign property-owners association, we'll be able to hold regular meetings to deal with problems that might affect them directly', he says. 'Up until now, that hasn't been possible. They live isolated lives. Whereas it's not true that there's real conflict, it's also true that more dialogue and interchange will be good for us all''.
Here's a quote from me (as editor of The Entertainer): 'It's not easy to break down the lack of communication and the resistance to dialogue. Both sides are at fault. The Spanish administration doesn't believe in the role that residential tourism has to play, and the foreigners prefer to keep to themselves in what is little more than foreign ghettos'.
A year later, with Bartolome Flores in power, things hit a new low as the mayor was persuaded to demolish the old fountain and its surrounds (down at the foot of the village) for a new modern, marbled magnificence designed by a scion of the new Junta de Andalucía. I remember a sign held by an indignant Brit which caustically read '90,000 pounds to wash my knickers' (a reference to the old tradition of washing ones' clothes in the fuente). The following demonstration up in the Plaza Nueva turned into a riot, with an arrest and several broken heads. It also proved the downfall of Charles Baxter, hitherto fêted by the locals as a TV personality. A mojaquero said afterwards - it's not that we don't agree with the foreigners about the fuente, it's just that we don't think they have the right to say anything...'.

Mojácar wants tourists because it wants their money. To get these tourists, it's fashionable (while at the same time apparently considered to be useless) to make promotions here and there. Well, here anyway. While I have not actually counted them, I would say that there are around twenty 'Come to Mojácar' posters artfully posted somewhere around the municipality, as if we might believe in some way that the Tourist Department was doing a wonderful job of promotion elsewhere.
Sometimes the promotions are in Spanish; other times, in what passes for English, but isn't, they aren't.
Not content with the 'Dump on your Plate' school of promotion for those who can read English (known outside of Google translation as 'the poop in your soup group' - which has the advantage of avoiding having to invite foreign native-language speakers to participate in the feeding-frenzy), the sale of our small and increasingly irrelevant resort to the larger world has gone from the Domino Theory of Fame for All the Wrong Reasons (See The Times, The Independent, the BBC, and a number of Spanish national dailies enjoying a joke at Mojácar's plans to control noise down to a squeak), via the 'only souvenir ever brought home is a multa from the traffic police' (this in a tourist town with several hundred bars and restaurants, where drinking a glass of water is hardly an option), to a complete loss of plans or ideas for where this community might go. What are we promoting here? The chance to fill our street with a caravan of cars and buses, just to fill a few cash registers? Is that it?
Added to this, we have the freezing out of all forasteros, particularly foreigners, by the town hall - as if we are suddenly the problem rather than the solution.
A speaker in the plenary session earlier this week discussing the point about controlling the noise in Mojácar said that we live from tourism - both the relaxed and the party-time sorts ('turismo de descanso y turismo de ocio') - which rather obviously don't like to share the same apartment. This is the applied wisdom in our town, a resort with just one two-lane street running in parallel with the Mediterranean. Cheap hotels at either end and a clutch of bars and restaurants in the middle - controlled, generally speaking, by murderously high rents.
In our badly planned town, which enjoys probably the easiest winters in the whole of Europe, most of those hotels, bars and restaurants alike, are closed outside of the summer season.
There are of course three types of tourism - the relaxed restaurant and bed by midnight type, the noisy down to the disco and back for a party type and then the bleeding obvious make a fortune for the town long-term visitors or residents type, which generates most of the income here, known fatuously in Spanish as 'residential tourism' - the type that buys a house, a car, white goods, food and clothing. That pays municipal taxes. That appreciates and respects the town and the surroundings, that wants the best for Mojácar; that has an investment, an interest in the future of our community. That would like to participate, to integrate and... to help improve the reputation of this town. But we will never ever find the Town Hall spending anything on promoting that sort of tourism.
In the immortal words of John F. Kennedy, 'Ich bin ein cateto'. No hold on, it was his other remark I was thinking about: 'Don't ask what Mojácar can do for you, rather, ask what you can do for Mojácar'!

A note from Reuters begins with: 'Spain is working on a new anti-piracy law which will be robust enough to keep the country off a U.S. watch list of copyright violating countries, Education and Culture Minister José Ignacio Wert said'.
Education and Culture. So, downloading a film, a piece of music or a book is illegal according to the minister of education or culture, unless, of course, the owner is paid. A service has been provided, and even shared (if I invite a few friends around), although nothing has been consumed. 
So, in the case of a movie, who gets the money when I buy a ticket? Keeping it easy, let's say the producer, the director, the star, the cinema and the taxman. Not the extras, or the cleaners - they've already been paid (probably in black money at that). Now, where do the producer, the director and the star each put their twenty million dollars? I'm guessing that, as often as not, it will be placed in an offshore account, where the money is rather obviously not used to help the State.
But, no, it's me they are worried about. 
I have the choice of seeing a movie and paying, seeing a movie and not paying, or not seeing a movie. I could pay to see the film, but it's not available here where I live, neither in Spanish nor in its original language. Well, I can wait a year I suppose. Or I could grab a plane and fly to London and see it in the West End. Perhaps it will be on the TV in a couple of years time, courtesy of the Mars chocolate people. Perhaps I should buy a TV.
I hope that it's good.
So, if the copyright owner and the star and the producer aren't going to get my three euros (which is what, in the end, I'll have to pay the fellow on the street corner who has black-market copies for sale on DVD), what's the difference to them if I see the film or not? You see, if it's good, I could at least recommend it. If it's crap, at least I won't be writing to them and asking for my money back.
But all of this is of small account. The larger question is whether the Government, José Ignacio and all, are working to represent the interests of Spain and the Spaniards, of the dissemination in general of education and culture... or of Hollywood.

There was another pleno - town hall meeting - yesterday in Mojácar. There were originally six points, which were reduced to five after the temporary removal for another day on the chilling idea of the Mayoress to control all noise (taking this idea as literally as one might) from the daily grind of life in our eccentric community. While Mojácar should be a bit quieter than Butlin's, a place it increasingly resembles, it seems that there must be a balance. Indeed, the balance is very much ignored here, with rock-breaking machines now immersed in the second of the Mayoress' three big projects to transform the village and, more importantly, spend the six or seven million odd that the previous town hall got from selling a chunk of land from Macenas back to the promoters. Who since went bust.
The remaining points were to grant the taxi drivers an increase in their fares; to spend money on a taser for the local polis; to build an electric knob so that cars can't drive up to Rosmari's underground car-park which hasn't opened as yet, anyway - nine months after completion; to spend the councillors un-awarded Christmas bonus on children's scholarships and to support a dog shelter for the Micar Valley.
The main point of the meeting, presided of course by Rosmari and her absolute majority, was to begin on the third great project, being the evisceration of the Plaza Nueva and the remodelling of the viewpoint - the mirador - which is in a parlous state. The plan being to turn the first into another underground car-park and the second into another ayuntamiento.
The rubber-stamp councillors, missing from the photo above since they are seated to the right, were quick to shout 'aye' on every point, including this project to keep the town essentially under the rock-breakers (boom boom boom) for the best part of the entire legislation, noise and dust notwithstanding.
A new town hall, which we evidently don't need, should be built where the people who need it happen to live and located where they can easily gain access. Ninety percent of the population of Mojácar live on the playa.
The picture shows Angel Medina from Ciudadanos Europeos (left, next to Jessica Simpson), now back at his post in the opposition: The mayoress Rosmari Cano, can just be seen to the far right..

A recent article from Rafael Yus Ramos in El Observador talks about that Mecca for tourism – the Costa del Sol. But, he says, it's not a tourist destination so much as a place where foreign people live. What the Spanish authorities, lost for a better description of the vast numbers of us extranjeros, and both unwilling and incapable to treasure our input and value to the community, describe weakly as 'residential tourism' before quickly turning to other topics and ignoring us. 
We should almost feel flattered that they have decided to tax our properties elsewhere in the dreadful Asset Tax (for which they have no reason). Here's Rafael:
'...When you drive down the N-340 road which runs along the entire coastline of the Costa del Sol, what catches the eye are not hotels, but the huge number of homes built, many of them forming large residential communities on the outskirts of the original towns, with slightly odd workmanship on the homes. But, who lives there? They are just people who reside on the Costa del Sol: not native people that work there, but rather elderly Europeans, people who were seeking this place for its quietness, the gentle climate and the good health services available...'
Rafael prefers to describe his foreigners, not as residential tourists, but rather as immigrants.
So, he asks, 'are these residents 'tourists' in the genuine sense of the word? The product under offer, a house, is it a 'tourist product'? Finally, is this the best solution for the local economy?'
But there are few observers like Rafael, and the foreign residents (and the comparatively massive amount of money they brought with them) are mixed in and forgotten as a small and unimportant part of Spain's love affair with tourism.
My question – how much does Spain spend on promoting tourism? And how much does it spend on looking for foreigners to become residents by buying into the country? Has it ever dawned on anyone that a resident, here for 365 days, who has bought a house, a car, a washing machine and is keeping the local businesses open during the winter months - is worth rather more than a visitor who is here for five days and may as well choose Portugal next year.
Another article out last week on the subject of the foreign residents, comes from Valencia's Levante. This one is titled 'The Foreign Residents don't want to integrate' and deals with the Marina Alta, where foreign residents apparently practice 'auto-segregation'. - 'The difference lies in making a living. "Labour migrants" reach the Marina Alta impelled by necessity, while the "residential immigrants" arrive with their life already arranged. The first strive to integrate. But the second stay as tourists and "barely seek any relationship or services from the host society"'... 66% of the citizens of the municipality of Teulada-Moraira are foreigners, says the article sententiously.
There is a point which is being lost: when you sell a car, a tee-shirt, a souvenir or a plate of food, the buyer leaves with it and takes it somewhere else (if only in his stomach). But sell someone a house next door, and, hey presto, you have a new neighbour. Sell five hundred nearby houses to five hundred British families, then you can not be unduly surprised when the neighbourhood suddenly starts to change from a quiet Spanish area smelling gently of anchoas to a ghetto of sunburned Britons marching around wearing shorts, sandals and socks. And lastly, my friend from the Levante newspaper, remember this: We are all Europeans now.

Following revelations of the Luis Bárcenas accounts which appeared in part in El País a few weeks ago, the Partido Popular has come in for a bit of friendly ribbing. Suggestions of 'brown envelope' money passing hands and, somewhere behind it all, some irregular party contributions from major businessmen involved in construction, makes it all sound a bit like we are living in New Jersey. No doubt we shall all settle down when the two investigating judges (currently and inexplicably at loggerheads) are able to show that it was all just a big misunderstanding.