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The Guardia Civil recently trialled sending round mounted police to patrol the many greenhouses in the area. This seems to have been a great success, inasmuch as it’s cut crime. So successful that the Guardia have announced their intention to resume patrols later this month.

However, they are a bit miffed that on Friday some joker broke into the police stables, opened the doors and shooed the police horses out into the fields.

It seems it took quite a few officers most of the day to track them all down. No horses were injured, apart from one who got a small scratch. It is rumoured that a new padlock has been brought.

From what I can gather in the press:

-GALASA was paid €50,000 by Albox town hall to keep the water running for at least another 30 days.
-There is still €800,000 outstanding in back water bills.
-The town hall is expected to fire GESTAGUA and replace them with GALASA as the water suppliers for the area.
-GESTAGUA, which still has several years of the contract left to run, is expected to take Albox to court for a large sum of money for a breach of contract.

And the Albox taxpayer is somewhat poorer.

Juan Antonio Segura Vizcaino, PSOE Andalucian Spokesman has announced that the Almeria to Seville air bridge could be operation by 2009, with 60,000 passengers a year. It is expected to take 50 minutes (only takes 65 to Madrid or 130 to London; what sort of planes are they expecting to use?).

One million euros has been allocated to start this up, together with another million euros put aside in case the airline makes a loss on this route. Although the money has been set aside in the budget, it require EU permission to concede the line, so that is the last hurdle to vault before being able to fly from Almeria to Seville.

The idea is to use taxes to pay for the line until the new AVE lines are built (if you know when this will be, please tell both me and the politicians), as Almeria is “a long way away from Seville and this is necessary to keep Andalucia competitive”. It currently takes 5-6 hours to drive to Seville.

And don’t forget that Flysur, our Cordoba to godforsaken places in Spain airline, went bankrupt after only a month (as the government kept moving the control tower from landing strip to landing strip without prior notice).

Guess what? I’m naming this my Biggest waste of money of the week.

After what seems to be some high level involvement, GALASA has agreed to give Albox town hall another months worth of water and not cut it off in 24 hours.

An emergency meeting of Albox town hall agreed to setup an investigation into the reasons for the nonpayment of back bills to Albox and will try to decide who is responsable for the water problems.

They also agreed that it was impossible to ask the citizens of Albox to pay twice for their water and will try to find a solution, and also to rescue GESTAGUA from its problems.The Mayor of Albox, Jose Garcia Navarro, said that cutting off the water “was inadmissable” and that nobody in the administration would permit it.

Reading between the lines? Honour is satisified. Everybody has got the message. A back bill to GALASA will be paid. If GALASA needs more time to pay some invoices they can blame Albox for not paying and use that as a reason for negotiation. The regional government has (behind the scenes) smoothed things over. And nobody looses votes. Told you the mayor would come out smelling of roses!

The CNE (Comision Nacional de Energia, or National Energy Commission) wants to put the price of domestic electricity up by 31% as from January 09.

This proposal has been met with cries of horror by the politicians. Not to mention us poor buggers who have to pay for it.

The problem stems from the fact that the electric companies (Endesa, Iberdrola, etc) are generating electric for more than they are allowed to sell it for. The deficit is made up by subsideries from the government. Since the government doesn’t want to keep paying this huge difference annually to the electric companies, they asked the CNE to work out a way to bring production costs and sale price to the same levels. The obvious way is a whopping great big increase, which the politicians don’t really want - or make the electric companies more efficient, which the electric companies don’t really want, as it cuts into their vast, vast, vast, VAST profits (€6,801,000,000 between January and September 2008 [source]).

As I closed the browser and can’t be bothered finding it again, I don’t have the exact figures at hand, but if I remember correctly, for the 4th quater 2008 the CNE wanted to put the electric price up by 15% - the government kept it the same. Last quater, 11.8% proposed increase - 3.5% real increase. Etc.

So, we are now at a position where our taxes are paying for the energy deficit. I would prefer that the government drops the energy deficit subsidery, and allows the electric companies to hike up the price, as in the long run I reckon we’re paying more in taxes than in electric. But judging from the reaction of the Energy Minister to the proposal (along the lines of “Oh god, no! No! NONONO!!!!!”) I imagine the price will have a little hike and we will keep paying more through taxes than through direct prices. Ah well.

GALASA, our local supplier of (somewhat murky) tap water, has announced that if the townhall of Albox does not pay it’s outstanding bill it will cut all supplies to the town (domestic, industrial, agricultural… the lot).

The dispute stems from the old arrangement, initially setup by the ex-mayor Francisco Granero [P.P. party], who used a company called “GESTAGUA” to buy the water in bulk and then distribute it to the town. Invoicing and local distribution was taken care of by GESTAGUA, but the water was piped in by GALASA.

The trouble seems to be that GESTAGUA lost a lot of the water through leaks, and didn’t collect on a lot of bills due to faulty invoicing, bad management and (probably) hands in the till (not least that of Francisco, according to dark murmerings from certain sources). Due to this a rather large bill (amount not disclosed) has accumulated.

Normally in Spain these sorts of things carry on quite happily, as local and regional government back the debt so the companies just keep on refinancing and everybody is happy. However, the new Town Hall team have announced that they have finished the contract with GALASA, intend to find another supplier for water (mainly from local mountains and aquifers), will improve GESTAGUA and do not intend to pay the back bill. Their reasoning is that since the end user has already paid GESTAGUA for the water used, the town hall should not pay GALASA with taxes as this would amount to double billing, illegal under Spanish law.

Understandably, GALASA is Not Happy. They have given Albox town hall until tomorrow to pay the bill or find a solution, or they will cut off water supplies. This reaction seems to have surprised the town hall - a spokesman told La Voz de Almería that if the water is cut off they will take this “to the Junta de Andalucía, to central Government, to the President, and to the VicePresident of the regional Diputación to guarantee this service to the villagers of Albox”. He then went on to call the GALASA move “draconian”, “pasota irrespectuosa” (disrespectful and ignorant), and “contrary to Albox”. Strong stuff.

If the water is cutoff, nobody is quite sure what will happen. The best guess seems to be that quite a lot of gunk is going to come out of the taps as substandard water is connected to the domestic supply. While in theory the water cannot be cutoff to domestic users (especially as they have paid all the bills!), GALASA points out that they are supplying a company (GESTAGUA), so it is up to GESTAGUA to guarantee the domestic supply, not them. Most probably some underhand political deal will allow the current mayor to come up smelling of roses.

So let us know what happens tomorrow, Alboxians!

After many, many, many promises, with the announcement that the Garrucha commercial centre is back on track the Junta has found €9.817.496,71 (note the 71 cents, Lenox!) to build a false tunnel from the main road to the Garrucha port and has placed an advert asking for offers.

This means that the heavy truck traffic will go underneath Garrucha straight to the port without filling Garrucha with their noise and stench. Once the contract is awarded work is expected to start straight away.

Crimestoppers (www.crimestoppers.es), the British charity dedicated to finding wanted crinimals on the run via anonymous tipoffs from the public, have launched an updated version of their popular “Operation Captura”, which last year lead to the arrest and extradition from Spain to the UK of 13 dangerous crinimals. Hurrah!

The new operation is an update of the previous one, adding a few more rotters known to be living in Spain, and is accompanied by a publicity campaign in the local press and distribution of bar mats with their faces on in bars along the Costas.

The freephone number to call in Spain is 900 555 111, and all phone calls are guaranteed to be anonymous. Or visit their website at www.crimestoppers.es.

The Ministry of the Interior has denied Omar Bin Ladins (Osama Bin Ladins 17th son) asylum request to enter Spain, saying that they do not believe his life is in danger if he is denied entry into Spain. They cite a report by the UN High Commission for Refugees which also said his life is not in danger.

Omar is still in Barajas airport in a holding cell, and has 24 hours to appeal against the decision. If the UNHCR agrees that his life is in danger if he continues with his voyage then he will be automatically granted temporary aslyum while the courts process his claims.

You may remember that the UK also refused him entry, saying that his presence in the UK would cause undue stress to locals living near him. And possibly give the Daily Mail readers a heart attack.

El Ideal

The project commercial centre in Garrucha - which has the necessary permits from the Junta - has got back on track after Sevillana - Endesa, the electrical company, backed down on demands for an upfront paymet of 16 million euros.

It seems that Endesa refused to carry out the necessary work to supply the area with electrical power unless an upfront payment of around 16M € was paid by the promoters, as Endesa felt that the project would not succeed and the capital investment in electrical works would be wasted. The pessimists! However, the promoters of the centre were unable or unwilling to cough up €16,000,000.

Under an agreement brokered by the Junta and the town hall of Garrucha, the promotors will pay €3,000,000 to connect the new sector to the Mojacar substation (an underground line, I noticed with interest!). This line will also supply a new hotel, petrol station, VPOs and a couple of new urbanisations.

This means that the last hurdle has been completed and initial planning permission can now be implemented.