The work on the stretch between Taramay and Lobres has only progressed two percent since the opening of the La Herradura – Taramay stretch. In other words, virtually nothing has been accomplished on this much-needed stretch of autovia.

With the recent announcement of the ‘Tijerazo’ (Big Snip) to the public-works budget, all the mayors of the coastal towns held their collective breath, waiting to hear the Ministro de Fomento, Pepe Blanco, confirm that the A-7 would be getting the axe. He still hasn’t confirmed or denied, so these mayors, headed by the Mayor of Motril, are banding together to make war.

(More on in Three Summers More II.)

Jose Blanco, Ministro de Fomento

Patience has snapped, however, with the Chambers of Commerce Almería, Granada and Motril banding together with the Business Confederations of both provinces to demand the prompt completion of the A-7.

Quite apart from the non-appearance of the A-7, the N-340, coastal main road is falling apart and is being hastily patched up, ready to take on the onslaught of another summer of traffic.

Strangely enough, not one of the affected towns is governed by the PSOE, who hold power in the national and regional governments; i.e., La Herradura, Almuñecar, Salobreña and Motril. These main coastal towns are governed either be the CA (in the case of the first two) or by the PP (in the case of the last two.)

Does this have any real bearing? When you take into account the eight years that the PP were in power in Madrid, during which not one stretch of motorway was completed, either on the A-7 or A-44, it doesn’t seem so. Perhaps we should simply change from La Costa Tropical to La Costa Olivdada?
Which ever way you look at it, we are in for several summers of N-340 collapses, kilometric tailbacks and bottle necks where the Granada road reaches the coast, not to mention the Torrenueva gauntlet for east and westbound cars..

The alleged shady dealings around this new urbanisación are very minor, compared to the scandal that it is producing in Valencia, but nevertheless, many people in the province of Granada got up one morning around the middle of last month to find that El Caso Gürtel was no longer a distant, if sonorous, rumbling over on the eastern coast, but had landed amongst us.
International money laundering, nebulous real-estate companies and brand-new empty villas…

To understand what this is all about, it is necessary to explain a bit of the background behind El Caso Gürtel. This is the name of the huge scandal, allegedly involving black money, favours between businessmen and politicians, gifts and, above all, a huge blow to the Partido Popular in Valencia primarily, but also with repercussions in the party in Galicia, Mallorca and Madrid.

The affair came to light in February 2009 when Judge Garzón opened a judicial investigation involving alleged corruption amongst the ranks of the Partido Popular, after the national newspaper, El País, published the result of their investigative reporting. The paper, in turn, had been inspired by the denuncia lodged by a disaffected PP councillor for Majadahonda, José Luis Peñas in November 2007, followed by the secret recordings made by the manager of one of the main companies involved, Easy Concept.

The key figure, or the very centre of the spider’s web, if you prefer, is Spanish businessman Francisco Correa. This man is the name behind the ghost companies, Easy Concept, Special Events and Orange Market. The aim of these companies was to feed off public entities with the alleged connivance of conservative politicians in town halls and autonomous administrations of Madrid, Valencia, Galicia and Castilla-Leon.
Francisco Correa managed to place himself in the optimum spot, thanks to his being appointed personally by ex-Spanish Prime Minister, José María Aznar, giving him the task to organise party public events. It is worth noting that the present PP leaders, Mariano Rajoy and the First Minister of the Madrid regional government ceased to deal with him once Aznar stepped down.

By allegedly using cash bribes and gifts to public functionaries, all belonging to the PP, amongst them, reportedly the son-in-law of Aznar.

Salobreña is definitely small fry, compared to these political convulsions with the Partido Popular on a nationwide level, but it was the last thing that the PP Mayor of Salobreña needed. Consequently he made it clear before the press that the Town Hall of Salobreña had nothing to do with the illegal goings on in Urbanisación Alminares. Indeed, there is no suggestion of it either – this is purely the private laundering of money, involving the generation of black money in Spain, it’s being sent abroad to puppet companies, Fountain Lake and Rustfield, and then sent back again to be invested in real estate and thus legalised. He defends the legality of the building licence granted to the development company. The opposition, however, suddenly have a Hiroshima-stick to hit him with, wringing their hands and lamenting that the village should be tainted by this scandal.

According to the Public Prosecution Office, Jesús Calvo, sole Administrator of Madrid-based real-estate company, Nuevos Projectos Inmobiliarios, is merely a front man for Francisco Correa. All told, Jesús Calvo has 19 ghost companies, according the investigative judge, whose function is to ‘justify via company accounts earning and expenses not based on real dealings.’

With this set up, in May 2003 – six months after N.P.I came into being – it purchased on Monte de los Almendros a plot of land for 1,352 million euros on which 40 chalets were built. To do this the real estate company requested just over a million euros from Caja Madrid, later increased to six million. Despite this, several companies – all involved in the money-laundering ring, make ‘personal loans’ to N.P.I. which are later repaid in brick; i.e., chalets on the urbanisación.
As is the standard form where hidden money flows, illegal funds are mixed in with legal ones, so that some of the chalets were bought by normal, honest, members of the public, whilst others belong to straw companies. In fact, eight companies or individuals involved in El Caso Gürtel figure as ‘propetarios y vencions de la Urbanización Los Alminares.’

Finally, we make it very clear that all the above details are as alleged by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and as published in the original articles featured in the Ideal regional newspaper.

José María Rossell was arrested in Lanzarote (Canary Island) as he stepped from an aircraft at the island’s airport. He had agreed to report to the police station himself on Friday in Málaga, but instead he was tracked down to Lanzarote the following day.

Those arrested as part of Operación Jable (a total of seven, including Sr. Rossell) are accused of forging public documents, abuse of public post for financial gain, money laundering and bribery.

Sr. Rossel owns Andalucía’s largest hotel chain, owning a total of 29 hotels all over Spain.

Hotel Almuñécar Playa

Then along came Hoteles Senator, owned by Sr. Rossel and owner of the massive hotel in Taramay, Playacálida, which opened in 2004, and snapped up the hotel on San Cristobal, giving birth to Hotel Almuñécar Playa.

The workers rushed to form a union because they had enjoyed good working conditions: two days off a week, etc, and they feared that the new owners would make them sign new contracts with the normal abysmal working conditions in the hostelry trade on our coasts. The new owners agreed – with gritted teeth – to honour the Sol Melía conditions but things soon began to change. Hotel managers came and went, and before long, an atmosphere of foreboding began to permeate.

Then, as we reported in the February edition of the Seaside Gazette, There was uproar over the sacking of eleven permanent staff from the Hotel Playa Almuñécar. All political parties expressed their support at the time for the dismissed staff and the point was brought up in the following Plenary Meeting of the Town Council, where it was agreed to urge the hotel chain to take the workers back. There was talk of making the company return all of the municipal tax concessions that it has enjoyed over the years, but this was not adopted.

The hotel company cited low occupation figures as the reason for the dismissal of the workers, but the union pointed out that there is very little difference between the 2008 and 2009 figures. The workers claim that their dismissal was fruit of the fact that the provincial authorities rejected a request by the hotel chain to change the existing conditions of employment that had been agreed upon by the company, unions and administration.

Hotel Playacálida, Taramay

However, all this will come as a breath of fresh air for the town’s veteran small hotels and hostales. These businesses have been going for decades and have been suffering terribly, thanks to the price cutting offers that the larger hotels have been advertising. There was no way that they could compete with such ridiculously low prices.