Business as usual in Badalona as council ignores court order to shut for the bank holiday
Wednesday, October 12, 2016 @ 12:12 PM
A TOWN hall in the province of Barcelona has defied the courts and opened today (Wednesday) for business even though it is a national bank holiday.
The council offices in Badalona are attending to the public and six civil servants are on the job, despite a judge having ordered them yesterday to shut for the October 12 Spain-wide day off.
Whilst the rest of Spain is either kicking itself for not having gone grocery shopping yesterday, or chilling out with a mid-week day off work – or gearing up to watch the military parades in Madrid presided by King Juan Carlos and Queen Letizia – it is business as usual in Badalona, where public authorities do not consider October 12 anything to celebrate.
“Yesterday [for Tuesday], we considered the verdict to be a coup d'état against municipal sovereignty, so we've decided to open,” says the mayor's third assistant José Téllez, who then tore up the copy of the judge's verdict.
October 12 is a national holiday to mark 'Hispanic Day', or the anniversary of Christopher Columbus' having discovered the Americas and his docking in what is now Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com