The Second Mojácar POTALA Meeting

The second meeting was held tonight, Wednesday, in the hotel Continental. The meeting was in English and chaired by Albert Schroter with the mayoress Rosa María Cano and the vice-mayor Angel Medina. The subject was covered as before with about seventy people in attendance, including Len and Helen Prior. Albert spoke of the need for integration and the importance of the European community locally.
The map, just showing the Mojácar and Turre area, is above. Just below the green swathe (the river) and to the left of the star is the pueblo of Mojácar (just below the green bend). Small! Further to the left you can see Turre (with a dotted line and arrow around it). The large gray spot to the bottom right is Macenas. Garrucha is on the coast, in gray with another star on it. The very large yellow area to the top, backing on to Garrucha, is the proposed new city - proposed, that is, by the Junta de Andalucía without any recourse to local opinion. This new city will cover 55 square kilometres and could house anything up to 100,000 people, or more. The blue line dropping through it and heading left is the route of the AVE high speed train. There will be a train station somewhere within this new conurbation. Albert wondered why this area should be urbanised and, since the Junta de Andalucía would hardly be building fifty hotels on its own, who exactly was behind this plan.
Of course, said the mayoress, instead of investing in badly needed local infrastructure, like pavements, water, cleaning, police and so on - a hospital or some other major investment in our community - the Junta's plan was to put all of their efforts into this new 'city' and essentially 'starve' Mojácar of much needed income. Oddly enough, said Albert, the POTA (the master plan for Andalucía of which the POTALA is but a local part) precluded building new urban nucleuses. This indeed was the 'reason' for demolishing the Prior's home in January.
After the meeting, people were asked to sign a protest.