You don’t have to go further than what is happening in the Almerian Levante to see that the Junta de Andalucía is taking revenge on us for having voted ‘No’ that time when we were asked in referendum about joining an Andalucian autonomy.
I mean, let’s face it, Almerian people don’t have much in common with the Andalucian dandies and their way of life (so vehemently copied by some of our local leaders). Almería has emerged from poverty thanks to its people and its own efforts.
We can walk with our heads raised high – and, for that, we don’t owe any agency, organisation or politician from Seville anything at all.
The other day, I was asked by a British journalist, during the course of an interview, about the changes seen in this province over the past few years.
I stretched back to the early nineteen hundreds for my reply, which was when they built the same roads as we were using until just recently.
Bad communication, water shortages, the absence of major public investment (throughout history) are the reasons why Almería, together with Soria, Teruel and a few other unfortunate and poverty stricken parts of the country, were until recently located on the tail of Europe’s regions. Things were made worse by the obligation of many of Almeria’s citizens to migrate to other provinces and countries to find work, with the result that few workers, so necessary to help with the economic recuperation, were to be found here in Almería!
Nevertheless, the Almerians are hard workers and they started with their bare hands to build the intensive under-plastic farming of the invernaderos; they began to mine the huge reserves of marble in the province’s interior; they were able to exploit the sun, the beaches and those untouched spaces that the province had in abundance, and tourism began to play a major part, together with its senior brother known as ‘residential tourism’.
Since wealth comes, like the lines in a cobweb, from all different directions at once, from these beginnings came fleets of lorries, building companies, exporters, hotels…
All of this, naturally, has contributed towards making Almería a higher-earning province than the national average and a place with a good standing in the quality of life that we all search for and aspire towards.
But then, just as everything was ticking over nicely and it appeared that Almería would never again return to the doldrums of poverty and obscurity, when all we had to do was to use our raw materials wisely, along comes the Junta de Andalucía with the firm commitment to work in every field possible to stop, halt and undermine every single one of our industries. Envy or just inefficiency? Ignorance or perhaps something else… the desire to tear us down again?
It appears that, at least here in the Levante, the area I naturally know the best, all efforts are being made against our local best interest.
We recently had to support the infamy of Sevillana/Endesa putting up a new chain of high-tension towers stretching through urban areas and now we have the blight of an enormous water-tube and above-ground slash going through Mojácar’s Sopalmo and the Paratá.
In a few days time, the POTLA will be officially presented (territorial plan for the Almerian Levante): one of the most idiotic urban proposals that I’ve ever heard of and which we shall have recourse to consider in detail.
For the moment I just want to say that the plan – dreamed up in Seville (without, I might add, asking for the opinion or presence of any politician or technician from here) – when put into motion, will have the effect of stopping all growth and no doubt returning us all to the bad old days of recession and poverty.
We must fight to secede from Andalucía and to start our own autonomy. Some Almerian parties – such as the GIAL and the PAL – lost an opportunity in the recent elections to promote independence from the occupation of Seville and to return our faith to España, which is what we would all prefer.
