The Little Hotel in the Middle of Nowhere

The Junta de Andalucía has changed its tune about property in the region, allowing new licences for various projects which would not have been allowed under the previous regime. If only the Hotel Algarrobico had have been built today (ahem!).

One new hotel – a small one with just thirty rooms and a swimming pool – has been given the green light to be constructed in what was an old esparto-works in the Cabo de Gata (Almería): just a short walk from the Playa de Los Genoveses, described here (in a strange but understandable English) as ‘…the most beautiful bay of the Nature Reserve is this beach consists of dunes virgin fine golden sand’.

Diario de Almería has the sad story here. Oddly, the thirty rooms will need a licence for parking for seventy cars, which seems a lot – two to a room? Perhaps it’ll be a hotel for assignations. More likely though, even if they forgot to mention it in the article, there’ll be a swanky restaurant. Valeted parking, anyone?

(Say, if they let Fulano build a hotel in a National Park, why not me as well, or how about just a teeny tiny urbanisation…?).

Mind you, the new hotel does sound nice – at least, according to the ABC which says here (paywall) that guests will be able to take the goats for a walk, thresh the hay and other bucolic delights. You might want to take your dinner jacket off…

The final word (apparently, Gosh don’t things change?) must come from the town hall, which in this case is Níjar.

 

Care for the Elderly

 One thing that the pandemic highlighted was the lack of protection in the residencies, the care-homes for seniors.

Responsibilities were eventually pointed at everyone except those responsible, as often happens here, and some changes were (we hope) made, although a story this week of 34 of the 39 seniors in a centre in Santiago de Compostela infected with Covid and, we read, left in their own waste for twelve or thirteen hours each night (here) doesn’t inspire much confidence. Who is responsible for that?

José Antonio helps with BoT from his own room in a residence down in Málaga. He says that the issue is the people who come through the door – delivery men, gardeners, visitors – all capable of bringing infection with them. Then, it’s also the case, he says, that old people don’t shake off bugs like younger people do; and furthermore, they aren’t very good at keeping their masks on properly.

There’s also, of course, the funding – often subject to sad but no doubt necessary economies: particularly in PP bulwarks. We know that most residences will take some social security patients, while other ‘private’ clients will be paying something around 1,700 to 2,000 euros a month.

We are assured that the Spanish (unlike their northern neighbours) always prefer to keep the old ones at home with them, and this may be partly true, but now with less time or the whole family working or the space needed (as the kids just won’t leave home), the attractions of an old folks’ home may, however unwillingly, become the solution.

Many years ago, I was working on a project (with our old friend Per Svensson) to introduce a different kind of nursing home in Spain. The idea at the time was for a wealthy Nordic town hall – we were looking at Bergen – to build their own residence in Spain as the costs would be cheaper than in Norway and the patients would be pleased. The proposal was to build apartments which belonged to the foreign town hall but were leased for life to the residents (either private or social security) – and with a spare room to keep their families happy.

We looked at one location in Almería, I remember, which was close enough to the shops and the bars for the residents to egress from their rooms when the fancy took them.

This week, El País in English features such a place in Alicante’s Alfaz del Pi, the magnificent Forum Mare Nostrum (here) and says that there is now plans from foreign companies for others to be built. A small heads-up: the El País article has this line: ‘…To live in Forum Mare Nostrum, residents must make an advance payment of between €100,000 and €230,000 and pay monthly rent, which ranges from €350 to €950…’.

I checked with another such centre down (these days, you look something up, and along comes a slew of advertisements on a similar subject) in Benalmadena (Málaga) called Sensara (here) which is clearly not cheap, but it looks pretty nice.

Another idea for seniors is to pool their money and build/open their own purpose-made residence, sometimes called cohousing (which is explained here). A page for cohousing in Spain is here and an example of one from Google is ‘…an affordable cohousing home for the 50plus generation…’ called Espadevida (it’s near Mojácar, Almería) here.

Perhaps one of those 2,800 empty hamlets scattered across Spain could be re-bored into a retirement village. Perhaps they could refit the doomed Hotel Algarrobico into another.

All fine, if either granddad or the family has the money; if not, it may be back to the residencia where things will not be as bright (especially as one’s comprehension of Spanish may begin to recede with age and deafness and who knows the embarrassing words that indisposed seniors may find that they would suddenly need in a small emergency…)?

The Spanish residencies won’t have English-speaking staff (or TVs) and there may be a call to find a better answer for the foreign residents.

After all, sending them ‘home’ is, I think, a sad solution.

This Little Piggy Went to the Market

 It all started with an interview given by the Minister of Consumer Affairs Alberto Garzón to The Guardian (here) where he insisted that the Spanish should eat less meat. While the meat lobby were unhappy to read this (they’d heard it all before, last summer, with Pedro Sánchez putting out the flames at the time by saying ‘I don’t know about you, but I enjoy a nice steak, me’), they were incensed to read in a foreign newspaper that Garzón contrasted ordinary extensive farming which, he says ‘…“is sustainable” with “what isn’t at all sustainable is these so-called mega-farms … They find a village in a depopulated bit of Spain and put in 4,000, or 5,000, or 10,000 head of cattle. They pollute the soil, they pollute the water and then they export this poor quality meat from these ill-treated animals’. Amen to the giant piggeries.

Understandably, the industry giants and any opposition politician worth his salt is through the roof with righteous rage. Telling the foreigners that our meat is shit.

Mind you, who likes battery farms, or pigs reared in a cage? Apart from the treatment of the animals concerned, doesn’t the quality suffer too?

Several politicians have asked for Garzón to recant (and then quietly resign); but he is standing firm.

Now it has become the leading political issue of the moment, as the upcoming February 13th elections in Castilla y León (a high-octane agricultural area currently under the control of the PP) approach. The PP is almost certain to win the elections there, cue a sigh of satisfaction from the Head Office in Madrid, but any extra push would be (excuse the pun) popular – maybe enough to govern without Vox as a slightly heathen partner.

While many are against this betrayal of Spanish meat by a foolish lefty (Garzón is secretary of the Izquierda Unida) and even some PSOE barons are raising their voices against him, there are also many who agree that the macro-farms are doing major damage in various ways. In the last six years, there are 35% more pigs in Spain than before, yet the number of farms under 1,000 animals have dropped by 30% - showing that the larger, industry-owned macro-farms are becoming the norm.  The main problem though is the massive amount of animal waste – called purín in Spanish: a mixture of urine, poops and brown water – high in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. It is used initially as fertiliser, but the excess can end up in underground aquifers – with over 1,000 of these now affected according to the Ministry of Ecology. Of course, the costs in these macro-farms are, per unit, cheaper that traditional farms can match, leading producers to prefer them, and in some cases, operate them themselves.

  

Some Notes from the Media:

 

Spanish News Today here: ‘Spain is the fifth largest exporter of meat in the world’. It says that ‘Garzon’s contentious views could do untold damage to Spain’s meat industry, which was worth over 7,000 million euros in foreign sales last year’.

LaSexta here: ‘Presidents Lambán (PSOE - Aragón) and Mañueco (PP - Castilla y León) call for Garzón's resignation, claiming that he attacked Spanish livestock in his interview in The Guardian'.

AraInfo here: ‘A number of Aragonese environmental groups criticize the Aragonese president Javier Lambán for "contradicting the decisions taken by his own government" and "confusing the citizens." Equally (we read), they support Alberto Garzón who "has done nothing more than defend a model that is based on extensive cattle ranching and employment in our rural environment"…’. They are calling for Lambán’s resignation (Heh).

elDiario.es here: The president of Castilla-La Mancha Emiliano García Page (PSOE) also criticises Garzón’s remarks – as does Vox and the PP. Then, it says, ‘…Garzón answered first that the president of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, is "desperate for far-right votes and that is why he is resorting to the lies and manipulation from the lobbies"…’.

LaSexta here: ‘Garzón repeats his remarks: saying that he is right to point out that the meat from macro-farms is "of worse quality". The Minister for Consumer Affairs has also pointed out that his statements are "impeccable" and that he made them "as minister, and not just as a personal opinion"’.

La Razón, in an opinion piece, says that we wait impatiently for the inevitable departure from the government of the Minister of Consumer Affairs (and, we can infer, the welcome collapse of the socio-communist regime).

NuevaTribuna says ‘Industrial meat-farming aggravates depopulation while causing a huge environmental impact’. It also says in the article that it’s pretty obvious that poorly and cheaply fed animals will produce lower-quality meat.

Then of course, there’s the destruction of the Mar Menor – pretty much down to the pigs.

Segovia – where there are eight pigs to every person – is also against the macro-farms. ‘We don't want to be the pigsty of Spain’, they tell Epe here.

From El Confidencial here, under the heading ‘the most meat in the least time possible’, we visit a macrogranja ‘like the ones Garzón talks of’. With video.

Greenpeace has a brief video from a year ago here called ‘¡Macrogranjas no!’

Further afield, from El País here: ‘The increase in livestock and industrial agriculture has a huge environmental cost, but Spain has not done enough to control and prevent it. With this thesis, the European Commission has decided to bring Spain before the Court of European Justice, with the understanding that this country has not adopted sufficient measures to prevent water pollution caused by nitrates derived from this activity, as required by community regulations…’.

Deutsche Welle says that ‘Germany declares war on cheap meat’.

Meanwhile, says El País here, ‘The Netherlands has created a new ministry (of ‘Nature and Nitrogen’) to reduce the impact of increasingly large pig farms. The department will be responsible for reducing emissions from the entire livestock sector in a country that has subsidized since 2019 the voluntary closure of pig farms’.

…

It is, in short, a rift between those who hope that life will continue in the way it’s been going, and those who know that it can’t.