Sunday 7 February 2010

The Impact on the Locals

The impact the foreigners have had on Mojácar and Spain has been good as well as bad. One of the things on the good side is that animals are treated better. Before they were never given names or affection they were there to serve a purpose, which is really very natural and efficient, but not to our way of thinking. We have gone to the other extreme and put animals up there with children (in some places higher). At the two benefit dinners they had in Marbella on some occasion, one for the abandoned animals and the other for the children of Bosnia, the animals made several million pesetas while the children only received a few thousand. That is just one example of the British sense of fair play of which there are many. In the old days in Spain, if your animal did not serve a purpose then it was killed or eaten or thrown away depending on the type of animal it was. Soon the locals were getting animals for pets and walking dogs, buying horses for pleasure riding, for which there used to be plenty of space. Now there is practically none. ‘Mascotas’ – pets – are very popular now in Spain and pure-bred dogs top the list in the cities but still the number of pets bought and later abandoned is enormous. After the animal stops being so little and cute, and you have to take it out to walk several times a day and you can’t go on holiday without a babysitter and your slippers have been eaten they don’t seem so cute anymore so people just abandon them in the streets or in the country thinking they can survive, which is not often the case.
We, the foreigners, brought lots of money to Spain and bought property, which we repaired, spruced up and gardened to our own taste and satisfaction. We gave business to the local workman and bought from the local shops. In those days, the prices were low, the alcohol cheap, cigarettes even cheaper; the sun all year long and the locals friendly, and so we started to invade the place. A lot of people running from the law in their own country, people who couldn’t survive in their country, could here and some just sold everything to come and live a peaceful life in the sun and sea. The foreigners, later, started doing a lot of the work and taking away trade from the locals because they didn’t speak English. I understand how this could build resentment, even though the money eventually filters through into the Spanish system. Nowadays some of the Spanish do speak enough English and several other languages to get by but there is still a preference (shared as much by the Spanish as by the British) to hire your own countryman.
The culture here was very basic and down to earth on things like life and death or body parts and bodily functions but in all other ways very conservative so much so that the men used to come from nearby villages to the Mojácar fountain. It was the only fountain where you actually had to stand in the water to do your washing. That meant tying your skirt just above the knees, and that is what the men came to see. Not many years later there were people walking in the village with beach-wear, leaving nothing to the imagination, men going into the bank in their Speedo’s and sandals and women topless on the beach. This was a very quick change for the people here but they seemed to go with the flow. Girls came on holiday for two weeks to drink and find a Latin lover no matter whether he was married or not because they would disappear never to be seen again so their behavior went a bit on the wild side. This was a very hard adjustment for the men because it meant free women at their beck and call. It was a great temptation. The Spanish have never been shocked by a politician having a mistress or men going to a brothel it is quite commonplace, as long as they come home and take care of their families, but all these available foreign girls was rather a different story.
Now, there isn’t really a plan for architecture like there was when I first arrived. Houses couldn’t be more than 20% on the second floor and you needed 500sq meters lot minimum. Apartments were kept to a minimum. The front line was protected and the beach bars, for which Mojácar is famous, were the life and soul of the income to this province. Now they want them to be taken down and built to an ugly, all the same style building, taking away all the character that made them so popular. The town hall would have done much better if they only sold so many bar licenses so you would have to buy an available one, that way not flooding the place with bars that can never work, run by people who have never run a bar and don’t speak Spanish. Like the tobacco shops you can only have so many per area. What makes one bar popular and another not, I don’t know. The bartenders have to be friendly and fun, the food and drinks good and reasonably priced and the atmosphere enjoyable. Parking is one of the main complaints. There isn’t even enough for the people that run the businesses so where are the customers supposed to park? Well, as somebody once said, you can’t make money out of parking spaces.
Who can build where and what all depend on who is in power. That is where all this problem of illegal houses came from. No strict building code. In my opinion getting money so fast and the vast quantities of it made it so the long term good of the province was lost all for a quick buck. I think the town hall went for the package tourism because they came and went and didn’t try to get involved in the community. The locals having never had so much money and finding out that their was some nut that wanted to buy granny’s old farm for a fortune, changed their whole way of thinking and attitude towards the foreigners, and not for the better. Most of the locals have now learned enough English to get by but the majority of us haven’t learnt Spanish. One good thing is that the local children all have the opportunity go to university now and have a career. The only thing is, having seen what life is like elsewhere, none of them want to come back to run the family farm or business. The town hall should have stayed with the residential tourism, which in most cases only spend money here and don’t take away jobs, instead they chose the cheap package tourism where most of the money is paid in England anyway. Now due to this lack of planning the last virgin area of the Mediterranean and the beautiful countryside and beach front is covered in 40metre apartments that are empty most of the year. There doesn’t seem to be any clear rule as to what and where you can build. They have not left riding or walking paths, everything is paved and the only park areas we have are those children’s climbing areas along the beach, built, one suspects, more for the commission than the children. At least they have put in nice paved walkways to and from the beach with trees and flowers. But as far as the nature trails, they have disappeared. There is a wealth of beautiful nature to see here as well.
After forty years of trying to put in a youth club with skating rink or bowling and food without alcohol and game rooms, a place where the children could meet after school, have dances, learn a sport or anything, nothing came of it. All the mayors agreed it was a great idea and even when it was offered to be paid for and run by a private person it never happened. We still haven’t finished the football pitch or swimming pool, which are both useable.
Mojácar was a nice safe place for children to grow up and I feel very lucky my children had that chance but now the school is over 50% foreign and the countries tend to stick together making it hard for the children to learn Spanish. They say it used to take a child three months to learn Spanish but now it is about two years. The school never took advantage of having all those different cultures there at their disposal and never had anything for the children to do. There were bars and bars. If you wanted to meet your friends it was in a bar. One good thing is that bars were so available to the children, that there is not much of an alcohol problem here and it is perfectly acceptable to go to a bar and order a coke. In most other countries you go to a bar to drink booze.
One thing that didn’t exist much was help to charities. We are all very familiar with donating time and money because our families are so spread out. The Spanish took care of there own which in most cases meant the disabled went without any sort of school or therapy but were well cared for at home. The foreigners have helped a lot of charities and by trial and error found which ones were corrupt and which ones weren’t. Foreigners are still the main source of income for most charities but the idea is now starting to become popular with the Spanish.
The family unit was one of the best things in Spanish life. The whole family participated in everything, granny and two-year-olds dancing until five in the morning at the fiesta, that would never happen elsewhere, we were more separated by age. A British teenager wouldn’t be caught dead going to the cinema with their parents but here the whole family did everything together. Modernization may be taking over old traditions but we have not ruined the Spanish family unit. It is slowly going the way of the rest of the world on its own. Their values may have changed a bit but they haven’t done badly out of us. Most locals own a house on the beach and one in the village, a farm, several shops and restaurants. The whole family, including the kids, drive big fancy cars.
Even for those of us that were here when it was a simple life and wish it had stayed that way, we have to admit that it is still one of the most beautiful places on the coast. In the end I would have to say that in general our impact here has been negative - for us, that is.

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