The Aku Aku and the Old Mojácar

'Once upon a time, Mojácar, in the province of Almería, was a place located somewhere outside the known world; a secret place where special people, half-hidden and forgotten, yet completely happy ended up. Artists, painters, bohemian foreigners, crazy Englishmen, one of the Glasgow train robbers. A hippy era, of parties on the beach, with a little smoke and some fantastic beach bars...'. Thus begins a recent article in the national newspaper El País based on one of our beach bars, the famous Aku Aku - which in known for its great paellas and sublime summer concerts (proper music, not bad bands reprising Stairway to Heaven and Knocking on Heaven's Door for the millionth time).
Mojácar has changed of course from the 'secret place' of forty years ago into a tourist destination without much to recommend it. The Town Hall, with the support of the local merchants, has turned the village and its beaches into a money factory.
Where else does a residential village have concerts every night for the length of the tourist season (which never seems to end and yet is satisfyingly short)?
The article makes a similar point as somebody says '...The Aku Aku is of the little that still remains from that time, it maintains the spirit. Now you go out there and you find a gang of youngsters wandering around noisily with plastic penises stuck on their heads: a bachelor party. I once saw a group with a dwarf attached by a leash. The one holding the leash was so drunk that it was almost the dwarf who was leading him...'. (There's an agency that rents dwarves in Benidorm, seriously!)
Many articles that appear in the national press are reproduced by the local tourist department, but probably not this one. If for no other reason than that the town is conservative, run by the Partido Popular, and the Aku Aku is a beacon of the opposition PSOE, where the President of Spain was recently photographed in mufti, enjoying a paella with his family.
There are of course many other places in Mojácar where the old spirit survives, as the article itself points out. Many of these though, are chiringuitos, beach bars, and the Town Hall wants to extend a beach-wall and promenade through their land (where the diners sit) which will make the playa more pleasant for visitors, dwarfs and others included, and more remunerative for those who own businesses on the other side of the road.  
If you are visiting Mojácar for the first time, then before you leave, go and have a meal at the Aku.
Tell María I sent you.