Jávea among the 50 towns
worst hit by the crisis in Spain
The CSIS (Centre for Scienctific
Research) has produced an atlas
of the crisis and calculated various
indices to gauge how badly various towns have been hit. Jávea
is considered to have suffered a
“major impact”. Hardest hit towns
were those which based their tourism on massive and dense construction of secondary residences for a middle class population.
There is still a surplus of properties - Denia alone has 26,000
vacant properties. Those less hit
had a more diverse economy , renewed industry, some export capacit y, and a basis for innovative
business. These towns tended to
be in the Atlantic coast Provinces
and Navarra. From La Marina Plaza.
Benidorm - officially not a tourist town According to the law, one
of the requirements to be classified as a Tourist town is that the
number of houses which are second residences must exceed the
number which are primary residences. Benidorm fails this test,
despite contributing 1% to Spain’s
GDP (10% of that of Valencia). As
a result it is not entitled to extra
funding to cover services to cater
for any more than its 69,000 registered inhabitants. Benidorm has a
floating population of 150,000 and
more than 400,000 people flock
there in the summer to enjoy the
beaches and nightlife. Security is
a problem, since the number of
police it is able to employ is based
on the registered population. A bill
to modify the law failed to pass in
the Congress of Deputies. From:
El País
Complaints about the aesthetics of the new Port Plaza Port
residents have collected signatures to write to Xàbia’s Mayor
Chulvi denouncing the design of
the new public space in the Port,
the Maruja Varó plaza. People
consider the design to be pretentious, harsh, de-humanised, hot in
the summer, and cold in the winter,
with few plants and not taking into
consideration the history or character of the area. Accepting that
the plaza was built in good faith,
and that it can’t be demolished,
they ask that abundant vegetation
should be introduced, with pergolas covered with climbing plants
to provide shade in the summer,
a refreshing water feature, references to Port and neighbourhood
history, and seats and corners so
that everyone can sit and appreciate the natural beauty of the beach
and bay. From La Marina Plaza
Massive fraud in recycling of
appliances The Consejo de Estado (Spanish Council of State - the
supreme consultative council of
the Spanish Government), has accused appliance manufacturers of
being involved in a massive fraud
over the past decade.
Manufacturers are obliged to
charge a fee of between 5-30 Euros to pay for the recycling their
old appliances, (“polluter pays”
principle) but the suspicion is that
the law has been ignored, the appliances sent to scrap, or sold to
illegal scrap merchants who do not
have the facilities to deal with toxic
waste, and the money used for other investments. It is estimated that
two thirds of the appliances end up
as illegal scrap. The result is that
Spain is near the bottom of the European recycling league (ahead
only of Romania and Greece). In
2012, 3.3kg of electronic waste
per inhabitant per year was collected in Spain, six times less than
the figure for Norway (20kg). A
“sting” operation carried out by the
consumer organisation tracked 16
appliances left at collection points
- only four completed their journey to approved recycling plants.
There are moves to identify each
appliance with a registration num-
ber so that its fate can properly be
tracked. This will require monitoring by each autonomous community From El País: El consejo...
Valencia rejects private parking
project for the Port The Ministry of Infrastructure has rejected a
project proposal by a Madrid company to set up paid parking in La
Caleta in the Port during the peak
summer and easter weeks. This
rejection is based on objections
raised by the Xàbia Town Council
which pointed out how this would
add to congestion in the area, and
reduce the already limited number
of free parking spaces in the Port.
They also stated that in view of
the planned re-organisation of the
Port, the issue of parking should
be addressed in a comprehensive
manner. Also that the Port is not an
isolated entity, but a part of urban
area, and any intervention should
take that into account. From XAD:
Puertos...
An “Energy Cheque” for low-income families The Valencia Government is to introduce an “Energy
Cheque” worth €100 for families
having dependent children under 18 and a household monthly
income not exceeding €532 per
month. The estimated cost will be
€1 million, and the scheme will be
run by an NGO, which will be selected by competition. They are
looking for one which has the right
netwook of offices and spread to
enable access to the scheme.
From Levante: El Consell...
Easter Tourism - steady as she
goes Preliminary figures for hotel
occupancy over easter showed a
figure of 90.13%, unchanged from
last year and 20 points up on 2013.
Full data will only been available
when rubbish collection, electricity and water consumption figures
have been assessed. For full story
see: Javeamigos