Mañana Belongs To Me

I suppose it was inevitable. Mojácar was bound to change eventually. 

First it was the arrival of the tour-operators, bringing with them their hordes of customers. The number of local souvenir shops (there may have been one) expanded dramatically and the last time I counted, there were fifty of them just in the pueblo. Fifty! 

Mostly they just sold junk - trucked in by the people who specialize in this stuff, a bit like the Mahou and Coca Cola man. The thing is, of course, that residents don't buy rubbish from the nick nack shops. Who needs a souvenir ashtray or a raffia bull's head? Sometimes these shops sell more interesting stuff, and the owners have either made it themselves or gone somewhere to buy it. Bravo for them. In general though, it's just tat, with good margins for the shopkeeper. In short, tourism was seen to be good. It only lasted a few months each year, despite the best efforts of the tourist department (in non-Covid years), but it brought in money for the hoteliers, who pay lots (we hope) in local taxes, even if they don't employ many local people. The town hall luckily does. Not bilingual people with foreign parents who have been through the local school system. No. Just huge numbers of mojaqueros. 

Mojácar in the old days was bohemian. There's not much point remembering it here, but it used to be a lot of fun. Now, it has become bourgeois, and is not. Sin City became Sin City (sin means without in Spanish). Maybe Facebook is partly to blame. A recent Brit post warned of a police control somewhere on the beach - and the reaction from the foreign residents was 'Shh! Don't tell them, they need to be caught'. 

The village is promoted as being beautiful. In reality, there are almost no remaining houses from earlier times (most were demolished in the middle of the twentieth century and the rest when the owners could afford to follow cheap modern blueprints). The village has amazing views and narrow streets. It's blue and white. It's dramatic, but it's not beautiful. However, the majority of the business and the visitors stick to the beach. A long beach, with its walkways and cameras and urbanisations... and tiny little overused beach road. Nice.

We read of dinky little charmless local restaurants being recommended in endless Facebook posts. Between the tourist office (with its huge budget) and the local Brits (there's no budget for promoting settlers), it's hard to remember that there are some very excellent foreign eateries in Mojácar as well. The tourist office indeed only champions local stuff - as if Mojácar were only filled with local people (in reality they make up less than 21% of the entire population, whereas just the Brits alone make 25%). You won't find a street named after an illustrious foreigner; indeed, they won't even name a square after Walt Disney (chuckle!). 

Rick Polansky (remember him?) used to say that a local could get a building permit in a morning, while it would take him a year. Perhaps he was exaggerating?   A mojaquero who became wealthy through politics buys a major business which couldn't get a licence when it belonged to a foreigner. Probably just a paperwork problem.

The main feeling taken away from the town hall is that this was our village when it was poor, and now it'll be ours again when it's rich. Fine, I say, but will it be a place worth visiting?