Corruption in Manilva continues

I just posted the following on the Eye on Spain forum:

Has anyone read the article in El Mundo newspaper on 18th of May about Zotano (the current Mayor of Manilva) and the contracts he has passed onto HIS company for electrical installations??

Someone has printed it off on bright green paper and is all around Manilva today.

It seems he has passed contracts up to the value of 753,538 Euros to his company Rafalux and the contracts were never put out to tender.

It seems corruption is still rife. Most people know my opinion of Zotano and personally I really hope he doesn't get in again.

And what a nerve too. We STILL have no street lighting where we are, which after 2 years is dispcable...and all the money he's passed onto his company....it just shows he really doesn't care about anyone apart from himself.

Roll on the elections on Sunday....I really hope people vote with their heads.

1 rose = 1 vote .... surely not

I took the kids to school this morning and was horrified to find none other than the Mayor stood at the school gates handing out roses to all the mothers! Was this a sign of desparation on his part? It certainly smelt that way (overpowered the roses!).

Come on, surely women aren't THAT easily bought....are they?? The elections are on Sunday and it seems the mayor is desperately trying to claw in those remaining "confused" voters. But can a rose really buy a woman's vote?

Please, any ladies out there, please tell me it doesn't work and that eveyone will have seen through him today??

If that's all it takes then I'm going to be buying Susan a lot more roses from now on!!

Salvador Zotano for Mayor....no thanks!

The elections in Spain will be held on 27 May 2007. You can see all the billboards, posters, flyers, etc eveywhere for all the different candidates for Mayor wherever you go.

Here in Manilva I still can't decide who's going to get my vote but I do know one thing for sure, it won't be going to the current mayor Salvador Zotano who is the PSOE candidate.

Many of you will probably remember this and how badly we were treated when we spoke to him about the problems we were having around our new urbanisaion. As most of the residents on our urb are either foriegn or Spanish (but not from Manilva) then he didn't care and told me straight....he wasn't going to do anything to help us.

I believe back then he probably didn't think he would be standing for mayor again as he was being investigated as part of all the town hall corruption. But now he wants our votes?

He must think we're stupid. One month before the election he starts tarmacing all the roads around the town (not ours though), starts trying to make things look nice, planting flowers, etc. It's just not good enough. Manilva theses days looks very shoddy and in all his time in power did nothing to improve things.

In fact, Zotano's campaign is about "vote for these projects" which are for parks and new facilities. Hold on....you haven't even sorted out the current mess! You think we're just going to vote for new facilities when the exisiting ones haven't been sorted and the place looks awful in so many places. Come on. At least the PP party are planning to set up a department to look after urbanustic issues, a step in the right direction me thinks.

I am actually really annoyed with him, you cannot treat people like he does. His decisions affect many people's lives and I don't think he understands that.

Roll on the elections....although I'm still not sure who to vote for. Sorry Zotano, it won't be you.

Is Medeleine in Spain?

I am sure that everyone is hugely concerned about Madeleine's disappearane in Portugal recently. As a father of 2 this would be by far my ultimate fear....not knowing.

Many news reports have stated the fact that she could have been taken into Spain and her appearance changed. The poor little girl, what more can we do to help?

I have put her picture on our home page. I have seen some other Spain websites do the same thing but still so many that haven't. Please, if you have a website with anything to do about Spain then put something about Madeleine on your home page. The more exposure this gets the more chance they'll have of finding her.

In these situations someone always knows something. Whatever anyone can do to help raise awareness then please do it...NOW.

Police have released a picture of Madeleine's eye as one shows how the pupil runs into the iris. This is a very distinctive trait:

Let's all do whatever we can to help.

Busy mother's day

Yesterday (Sunday) was mother's day in Span, so we had to follow orders and do whatever Susan wanted to do (sounds like any other really!). And what a busy day we had.

We started off going to visit the old town and castle at Castellar. It's a really interesting little place and in the 60's it used to be full of hippies. In fact, even today there are still some aound there and you can still see the hippy influence in the foriegn people there and there shops.

The castle and the little town (and when I say little I mean little, there are only a handful of houses) are right at the top of a mountain and the views are just spectacular from up there. Err, I forgot my camera so no photos to show you...sorry!

We then made our way back down and stopped off at the Castellar rastro (market) which was an experience. Again, more hippy influences and it's nothing like your typical market. There was a kids entertainer doing balloon animals for the kids and even pony rides for the kids. Our two, being totaly spoilt, got a pony ride each which they thoroughly enjoyed. There was also a superb cake stall there....all the more reason to go.

When we left there we carried on back down to Castellar de la Frontera, which is a newish town at the bottom of the mountain, which is where most people live now, instead of up by the castle. It just happened to be"feria" day which we didn't know but we decided to go to a lovely restaurant in Jimena for lunch.

We then made our way up the mountains into "los arconales" (cork woods) which was superb. Amazing scenery although the road was in a very poor state. They really should sort the road out, it must put a lot of people off.

After that we went back to the feria so that the kids could enjoy some of the rides although it was exceptionally hot there.

After a tiring day out we headed back home and nipped to the chrinighito infront of our house for an ice cream, which we then ate sat on the beach.

All in all it was a really fab day out.

Anyone else do anyting for mother's day?