EDITORIAL - Has she no common sense?

EDITORIAL - Has she no common sense?
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By Howard Brereton - Apr 2, 2009 - 3:15 PM
The Minister for the Environment wants to impose a twenty year old law on the Chiringuito beach restaurants, and take them off the beach

El espeto de sardinas,a typical menu on the beach in Málaga - EFE

One can only wonder what Elena Espinosa, the Minister for the Environment, is thinking about.
At a time where Spain is investing large sums of money on the dated parts of its tourist infrastructure, it is total lunacy, in the current economic climate, to suddenly decide to impose the Ley de Costas, a law which actually dates from 1988, and declare all the chiringuito beach restaurants have to come off the sand.

O.K., it may be that technically these restaurants have, under the law, been constructed on public land, but so what! They are part of the basic infrastructure and often a main attraction of many a beach along the coast, and after all they are all open to the public. Local Town Halls collect a large rent from most of them too!

The Minister said on Wednesday this week that ‘they bother bathers’. More bother for a longer walk to buy a new beer, or what does the Minister want?... bathers taking ice boxes and sandwiches to the beach instead. What effect would that have on local trade, already hard hit?

And what about the threat to all the jobs for the charming and hard working Spanish waiters and waitresses, estimated at 40,000 in Andalucía alone?

Minister for the Environment - Elena Espinosa - EFE

The law on a wider basis may be well-intentioned, but the Minister needs to realise that she simply should not apply it to the chiringuitos. Has she no common sense? She obviously has never enjoyed el espeto de sardinas in Málaga.

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