Well, one can forgive the Euro Weekly News and the Sol Times for forgetting about the annual Mojacar Moros y Cristianos fiesta (described in the special supplement of El Ideal as “the Levante’s most important fiesta” and Diario Sur de Málaga as “unmissable – eastern Andalucia’s trademark June festival”). Football is so much more interesting, and will fill a bar for an afternoon.
After all, despite the Euro Weekly News claiming to be “the paper that makes Mojacar matter” they are very big, and Mojacar is very small, and they don’t employ any reporters (just translators, as they themselves admit). After all, they can’t bother themselves with every little town they distribute in.
And the Sol Times seems to limit itself to copying and pasting typicallyspanish.com news articles. And is obsessed with its new edition in Roquetas. And is based in Albox.
But why oh why didn’t ACEM, the self styled Mojacar chamber of commerce, drop an email to their friends in the press (they used to get a whole page free in the Euro Weekly News for their self publicity! Use it for this!) to tell them about the festival? After all, if the EWN can print a half page about some shop opening in the parque comercial, and another half page about a Nigerian scam letter that someone called leapy Lee (who?) got, surely they could have printed something of interest to more than three people?
If the ACEM wanted to bring in more tourists, this is exactly the thing they should be promoting in the expat press. Just a round of emails with a decent press release and a couple of photos would have done the trick.
The Mojacar tourist board seems to have done a good job promoting the festival in the Spanish press (A quick google shows me that, amongst others, La Voz, Ideal -all three editions-, Diario Sur, La verdad de Murcia all ran special reports on the fiesta last week – I know a large number of Spanish families have turned up for the event). But we all know the tourist board can’t be bothered with the local expat press.
And that is what ACEM has constantly decried, and was supposed to have been formed to prevent. Remember?
Or has everyone, now that summer has arrived, forgotton about the hand wringing and fine words of the quiet winter months and gone back to their bars and estate agents to make as much money as possible before the summer ends? Because if they have, what was the point of all the fuss over the winter? Is ACEM even still going or has it foundered?
Because an organisation like ACEM needs to be there constantly, working all year round – not just when everyone is bored in February and looking for something to do.
Meanwhile, another missed opportunity to get expats up from nearby areas, and into our businesses, and get the word out about our little area (now full of abandoned half built transportation links).
Hopeless.