Budgets are tight but the Costa Tropical’s Town Halls have scraped funds together for Christmas street and square lighting.
Motril, for example, has lit its main streets and squares using a budget only 20% of the size of the 2006 one. Salobreña will only manage to decorate one street with Christmas lights and the Almuñécar Town Hall has juggled 30,000 euros for bringing Christmas cheer to public squares in Almuñécar and La Herradura.
Back in 2006 when money was bubbling with joy, the Town Hall spent 217,000 euros on Christmas lighting decorations, with a good part of that donated by local businesses. This year, local businesses are suffocated and struggling under the weight of five years of economic disaster and simply cannot make donations of this kind, so the Town Hall is using a budget of 45,000 euros.
Salobreña’s situation is actually better than last year when there were no Christmas lights at all – it’s not that there is more money around but that nobody was to go through two consecutive years in the dark at Christmas.
If there is one Christmas wish going out this year, it is things will be better when Christmas 2014 comes around…
(News: Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)