We recently went to Lorca to renew our car's MOT or I should say ITV the Spanish equivalent of checking a car for road worthiness. The nearest place this can be done is Lorca, a fifteen mile drive from here. It involves having a lot of paperwork, the usual emission checks etc and a scary check when our poor ageing Corsa is lifted up and shaken violently. Fortunately we passed.
We went into Lorca which is a beautiful town to see what improvements have happened since the earthquake in May 2011. (I have written about the earthquake in a previous post which can be found further down the page). A lot of work seems to be going on and there has been some rebuilding, however as EVERY building in Lorca was affected sadly much remains to be done, as the following photos illustrate.
If you look carefully at the photo below you can see that a business is being conducted on the ground floor of a building which is totally derelict on the upper floors.
However in spite of the earthquake and the recent floods Lorca seems to have recovered some of its optimism. The shops were much busier than during our previous visit, the castle is open to visitors, and it remains a delightful place to spend time in with lovely squares and many restaurants where you can sit outside and watch the world go by.
The floods at the end of September affected many outlying areas. We recently went on a walk with an evolutionist walking group based in San Juan de Los Terreros. We started at Los Lobos a small village up in the mountains nearby. A rambla which is normally a completely dry river bed had flooded. This photo shows the remains of a bridge (which was over a hundred years old), which had been completely washed away.
Further up the rambla a shepherds pens and out buildings had suffered a similar fate.
With the current economic situation no-one knows when or if the bridge will be repaired. Along with the bridge went a newly built cycle path that connected Villaricos with Los Lobos. This was built at a cost of thousands of pounds and has been completely washed away.
These things are fairly typical of this part of Spain's problems. Many expensive projects happened during the 'booming' construction years with no thought of maintenance etc. Housing developments are often sited in the supposedly dry river beds with disastrous consequences. An airport has been built in Murcia a few miles from a perfectly good one (San Javier). The new airport doesn't function due to a combination of lack of money and incompetence. Meantime Spain's unemployment rate is over twenty five percent which rises to forty percent in those under twenty five. There is real hardship here. Social security payments are very restricted and dependent on how long you've previously been in employment.There are daily reports on the news of evictions some of our friends are supporting children in their mid twenties and one friend knows personally two people who've hung themselves recently, and their daughter saw some-one throw themselves out of a high building.
Many public servants have not been paid for months. These include some police forces, cleaners and bin men etc. Many pharmacies have not had their drugs bills paid and are having to remortgage their homes to pay the bills which the government should be paying. People are said to be foraging in bins for food. So whilst things are bad in Britain they are undoubtedly worse here.
Having said all of the above this is still for us and many other ex-patriots a mini paradise. We can't believe it's almost December, the sun shines most days and it's round 18-20 degrees. Better still there are still no signs of the dreaded C word (Christmas) in the shops. My next post will be at the beginning of January so it leaves me just to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a healthy and successful New Year. Many thanks for reading. Any comments are very welcome and can be left at ;
Best wishes from Cathy
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