Mojácar: From Bohemian to Bourgeois in One Legislature

The fate of the 'most emblematic' beach bars is now sealed. The latest extension of the Paseo Maritimo - from the Red Cross to the Maui - was agreed yesterday (Monday) in a rubber stamp plenary session in the Mojácar town hall. The Government to pay 2.2 million euros and the town's piggy bank to cough up another 850,000€, plus the expropriation costs of 15,300 square metres belonging to fifteen separate escrituras. The PSOE leader Manuel Zamora reckons that this could cost as much as 'another four or five million euros'. The town hall claims that the expropriation costs will be a rather more accurate 501,304 euros.
The expropriation of 15,300 metres of land in the short stretch of coast - just 700m long - supposes a lot of land taken: some to make 145 parking spots (in our experience, town hall parking projects mean a reduction in parking spaces) but most of the expropriated land will become a sea wall, an elevated path, a cycling lane (rarely used anywhere, either in Mojácar or elsewhere, but very fashionista By Gum), together with gardens, benches, dog-shit bag dispensers, lights, and sundry other attractions.
"They want to make a macro-project more than nine meters wide in some areas that reduces the surface area of the businesses by more than 30%," says Somos Mojácar spokeswoman Jessica Simpson. "It seems that you hate business," she told the mayor during the Monday pleno, adding "Mojacar has become what it is thanks to that piece of coastline and you collapse it with nothing more than a silly smile...".
The certainty is that the beach bars, El Patio (fifty years old this season), El Cid, the Aku and others will lose a chunk of their land, most of their tables and all their beach beds would of course go - and there would be little left beyond a bar, at least in The Patio.
Clients would have to negotiate the promenade to get to the beach - or rather - the sea (there isn't much beach in that section already).
We must begin to wonder about the next remodelling of our playa - when the Paseo Maritimo arrives at the (quite hideous) roundabout where the crippled Indalo faces Garrucha - what will become of La Dolce Vita, or the Cava or La Pirata? Those places have no room on their sea-side for anything at all.
The mayor has said elsewhere that she wants Mojácar to be attractive to 'family tourism': buckets and spades, mosquito repellent, healthy parents queueing up to buy trifles in the souvenir shops which seem so prevalent here.
Shouldn't she represent the people who live here - rather than the ones she imagines would like to come to visit for a few days?