When working round the clock can last years
Do town halls have to wait in the queue like everyone else when it comes to planning permissions for their own buildings? It can seem so in Alcudia, where the clock tower at the town hall building was first covered by scaffolding back in 2021. The scaffolding and tarpaulin have finally been removed, the Partido Popular having made a big thing of their election promise last May to undertake much-needed restoration work.
There was a risk that bits of the tower could fall off. It is made of concrete but the exterior is sandstone, and it was this that had deteriorated and led to the risk. In August last year, by which time the cost of the scaffolding and tarpaulin had reached 18,300 euros, the tender was raised for the restoration. The budget for this was just under 170,000 euros, chicken feed for a town hall with getting on for 100 million euros of budget surplus cash sitting in a bank.
It had taken an election and an election promise for there to be a move-on. It isn't the case that town halls are subject to the same planning rigmarole as everyone else, but at Alcudia things had nevertheless ground to a halt, which had also been the case with the renewal of the beach bars (balnearios).
Now mostly demolished in preparation for their reconstruction, this is another hugely unsatisfactory state of affairs, one that the current administration has sought to blame the previous administration for. Even so, the work could have started earlier than it has. As was pointed out some weeks ago, the budget for the work hadn't been approved. An extraordinary meeting of the council last month finally gave the go-ahead. And as a consequence, Alcudia is to get some more tarpaulins for building work, ones with “beautiful images” (according to Mayor Fina Linares) to conceal the work on the six new beach bars that will last into the season. There is an absolute deadline, set by the Costas Authority, for all the work to be completed by November. One hopes that it's finished well before then.