Tourism is ¡Agggh! dead

I have always maintained that Mojácar should concentrate on being a residential town. With a pandemic, or a natural disaster or a recession or better tourist offers from Cyprus, the tourist market is always potentially unsure. But with (what the Spanish are pleased to call) Residential Tourism, we are here all year, spend far more than a tourist does (a hundred times more than one tourist) and we respect and repair our community, rather than being sick in the flower-bed. There's no ministry or agency or promotion or advertising for this industry of encouraging foreigners to buy a 200,000€ house and an expensive car, but the Spanish in their wisdom put all their eggs in the tourist basket.

Which is broken.

Indeed, attracting retired people, with their pensions, plus ‘digital workers’, who can earn their bread from working at home (check out teletrabajo on Google), plus the workers who must attend them, plus the all-year business for supermarkets, banks, restaurants and bars, plus the taxes they bring, are all more useful today to smaller towns than ever before.

Plan the town around its residents, not its customers. The festivals and attractions should be designed to appeal to those who live there (and have space for them to attend). Don't worry about the half a dozen money-crazed businessmen who want to turn the beach into a holiday camp, or the hoteliers (based in Barcelona) who want hordes of cheap all-you-can-eat tourism, or the souvenir shops, who only open during the summer months (when was the last time you bought a souvenir?).

Think of the residents, and make them proud of their pueblo.