Those little Spanish quirks

...In La Cala de Finestrat there are 3 problem construction sites, one at the end of the bay above Amancio's restaurant, one right in the middle of the bay, "Gran Magic Beach Hotel" and one at the other end of the beach which is a rest home for the elderly.

The Amancio building has been partly constructed for 25 years at least, and until recently Amancio's restaurant was a going concern. But a bit of the building fell off, prompting Finestrat Ajuntmiento to forcibly close the restaurant, and cordon it off.

There has been a long running legal battle going on between the Ajuntmiento and the owners. The building was declared an illegal build. Rumours abound that the buyers of the illegal building were compensated by the builders, and the row now, is over who demolishes it. Further rumours suggest it will be demolished this year.

The rest home was declared an illegal build and work stopped, the builders went away taking their tools and cranes with them. A local election was held in the May of 2007 a new Ajuntamiento was elected and the building was declared legal and building recommenced. It is fairly well advanced at the date of this blog.

The "Gran Magic Atrium beach hotel" is the weirdest tale of them all. It was planned to be completed in 2003, however there was a tragic accident in which 3 people were killed. At the back they had service lifts and 2 employees were working on the ground and one was in the service lift when the hoist broke and the lift plummeted to the ground. There was an investigation and it was discovered that the builders had built 11 illegal floors. A legal dispute went on for 3 years and in 2006 the press reported that the Magic group was fined 22,000 Euros and ordered to return thousands of square meters of floor space to the Ajunamiento (the equivalent of 11 floors).

The owners were very clever, they also have three other buildings on the same site and were going to build another, they cancelled that which went a long way to returning the floor space, they then demolished the top floor, and knocked away metres here and there until they ended up returning the amount required. They have now resumed building which is very slow even though they claim it will be finished by late 2009. I think not!

Anyway this brings me to the start of the summer season. Which tends to leap into action at the Festival of San Juan, previously blogged. And Ajuntamiento workers are getting the place tarted up a bit. They have replaced police keep back tape with a wire fence around Amancio's. The building work on the Hotel will stop throughout August as all the workers have the month off on holiday. Two bricklayers are changing the wall along the beach edge into concrete seats (the Great wall of China was allegedly built quicker than this). The lifeguard and red cross people have turned up on the beach and a small dinghy operates just past the buoys in the bay looking out for swimmers in trouble. It's interesting that all the other months in the year the locals can drown, put up with builders and find their own way to marina Baixa hospital with cuts and bruises. Which is particularly concerning as Roy "The Grim Reaper" sometimes visits in Winter.

The Summer season also sees a greatly increased level of Spanish Holiday makers, peaking in August when most take their holidays. At this time you could throw a Euro coin on the beach and it wouldn't hit the sand. All the businesses are rubbing their hands, and if there is ever going to be price increases it will be in August. This will not fluster the Spanish much because spending is not a fault of theirs. They can sit in a bar 6 to a group and watch one of their number drink a 90 cent bottle of water over 2 hours. The trick for the bars is to nab the British customers and then the Dutch and French, who do spend and drink. My bar, the Marina bar, are experts at this. The Marina is the most used Spanish bar in Benidorm by the English ex-pat. The formula is simple, speak to them in English if they can't speak Spanish, give crisps, nuts and biscuits with every round of drinks and as they present the customer with the bill, give them a free drink on the house. The final and perhaps the most clever thing they do, is remember who the couple are at table 'X' from their week's holiday last year!...Classic....