My meeting with the Mayor

As many of you will know by now, we have many problems with our development. The developer says the problems are down to the town hall and the town hall says the problems are down to the developer.

So this week we decided to take these issues (and there are quite a few) to the top and we made an appointment to see the mayor. The appointment was this morning and I was accompanied by Lola who is our "feisty" administrator.

I've never actually met the mayor before in person. I've seen him around and said "hola" but that's about it. He's always looked like quite a nice guy, friendly, and dare I say it, sometimes a bit camp (not that that's a problem in any way).

So we arrive at his office and accompanying him is the lady from the town planning department who let's say, we haven't seen eye to eye with before. It all starts off well, the mayor tells us we're going to be getting proper electricity and water in a couple of weeks (not bad after 18 months waiting for it) but then it starts going downhill when he tells us that phones are still going to be a luxury because Telefonica can't pull their finger out. I didn't feel the phone excuse was good enough but we moved on....and that's when things started to get nasty!

The mayor had a good laugh at the name that he gave our road..."Calle Utopia"...yes, it's the same word in Spanish. He thought it was quite amusing that this poor excuse for a road should be given this name...which he gave it himself!! I wasn't impressed to say the least. Moving on....

Things start getting animated when he tells me that the town hall will not spend a single Euro to solve ANY of the problems we are facing. He says it's the developer's fault and the fact that all the other developers in the area haven't coughed up their share. Seeing as three of the actual 5 developments here are actually stopped I don't think the developers are going to be shelling out any money for roads and infrastructure that they don't yet need.

So I told him I could not accept the fact that they would not take any responsibility for this mess which they helped to create. He started to get quite angry after I demanded some sort of resolution. I didn't get it. He just kept stating that they wouldn't pay any money at all.

I won't mention some of the things he said due to the sensitive nature of his comments towards the people living here but he is most definitely not who I thought he was. My whole impression of the mayor has changed totally. He lost his cool too quickly and as a citizen of HIS town he should at least be seen to be trying his hardest to make Manilva a place to be proud of....and he's not, he's just taking the p*ss. If that is his attitude then I can now understand why everyone's attitude in the town hall is the same. He certainly won't be getting my vote next year.

So we're back to where we started. It's such a shame because just 3 years ago Manilva was such a nice town and it's been totally ruined. I really (maybe naively so) thought the mayor would be genuinely interested in sorting out the problems that we've got but he's not. I didn't come to Spain for all this crap, I think in the New Year it's time to go house hunting again.

Now, where are those houses I saw where the roads have been finished???