agoreira

Bit like some of the fabulous promotions for urbanisations etc that were never built, or left half finished. Or the grand airports schemes complete with with shops etc that are like ghost towns, with councils left with huge debts. I'll believe these schemes when I see them completed and up and running. Probably the worst time ever to start such a scheme anyway.

steviedeluxe

Another one who doesn't believe Port Aventura, or Terra Mitica, or the four towers in Madrid, or various high speed train lines, or Terminal 4 at Madrid Airport, or the Science City in Valencia didn't get built!

You "knockers" really have to sort out your line of argument. Either these things do have a habit of getting built, and according to you are waste of moneys, white elephants etc. You can't have it both ways and say they are a waste of money, but don't get built. It doesn't make any sense!

It doesn't bother me if the Paramount park gets built or not - I won't be visiting it myself that's for sure. But it's probably the best time to start building it (if it goes ahead and takes a few years for completion). Labour will be cheaper now, and planning permission probably easier to come by.

agoreira

They got built certainly, so did loads of white elephant airports, and the AVE, nobody is denying that, but they are losing money hand over fist. The easy bit is building it, the hard bit is selling it and making a profit. The Science City made losses of 51.2 million euros in 2010, with debts of over 700 million euros at end-December. The Terra Mitica theme park in the coastal resort city of Benidorm, emerged from receivership in 2006, and is struggling. The EU was throwing money at Spain, and they grabbed it with both hands, but many were grandiose schemes, they were not sustainable, they are always going to lose money.The Science City looks brilliant, but it's hemorrhaging money. And now the EU money is drying up, soon Spain will have to pay it's own way. The biggest "knockers" of Spain are the Spanish themselves, they can see where their money has been wasted, unlike you. Have a read, they're all losing money!
http://www.expansion.com/especiales/...o/parques.html
http://www.spanishpropertyinsight.co...php?f=2&t=5870

JLFS

This is about Terra mitica, accumulated losses of 200million 4 million visitors a year were expected but the best attendance has been 1.5 million.

http://www.eleconomista.es/empresas-...-millones.html

It may be an enjoyable day out for families but all the talking it up, will not change the fact that the place is a failure.

The problem about a project like that is not paying for the building of it, so it really doesnt matter if labour is cheap or not at the time of building, but keeping the place showing a profit.
Sadly that is not the case with TMitica.

agoreira

Welll, more or less what I'm saying, building these these things with someone else's money is the easy bit. I think the key to the financial failure of so many of these schemes is in one of the links, The AVE, the airports, the theme parks,Science City, they all seem to have had hugely overhyped expected numbers of visitors, it's simply hasn't happened. Y para mas inri, the majority have involved money from struggling ayuntamientos, which are left badly financially embarrassed. ;-( They were sold the dream. Let us build an airport here. Give us lots of money, the visitors will arrive in droves, alas it didn't happen.

JLFS

Why would anyone want to come out with lines like that, just to end up with egg on their face.

Building these places is all too easy, like a peasant spending all his lotter winnings building a mansion, without having the income to run it.

It happens all over the world, big and small business, looking good from the outside, but dying a painfull death on the the inside.

Some were destined to fail even befor the crisis hit, the ones that should not have been built in the first place.........

Dick Dasterdly

Much the same with the building trade as a whole. It was obvious to me long before the recession ever began that the policy of build,build,build wherever whenever regardless, always believing that the price would continue to rise and everything would keep on selling, was doomed to dramatic failure one day when the bubble burst.
I had been predicting it happening much sooner, but the fact that the policy continued on at such an ever increasing pace for so long before inevitably coming off the rails with the recession, simply served to make the end result even more disastrous than it might otherwise have been.

agoreira

You know what he's like, anyone that stands back and takes a more realistic, unbiased view of what is actually happening in Spain is a "knocker"! Anyone can put themselves in hock and build these things, but in most cases, it's throwing good money after bad. Perhaps they should build a few more Alhambra's, that's always been heaving when I've been there!

Dick Dasterdly

Yeh, but they'd have to invite the Moros back in to do that.

steviedeluxe

So which is it?

Either A) The Spanish DO get things built (but as knockers we're going to sneer at the lack of profitability in the middle of a recession, and ignore the big export contracts like the Saudi deal that came from this investment)

Or

B) The Spanish don't get things completed.

You are still trying to have it both ways. Totally inconsistent, and you know it. Which is why you're squealing like children.

JLFS

A lot of the so called "white elephants" were built/started with EUmoney.

So far so good,but the availability of that money is not always a good thing, if the W.E does not pay its way.
If the money was not readily available,maybe things would have been planned better/scaled up/scaled down/different location etc.

As the descisions are usually based more on "real world"situations,and not the "the money is there and we need to grab it" situations.

In simpler terms, if you/yous/one was given a bale of hay would you then go out and buy a donkey?

A lot of peeps might buy the donkey without considering, if they could afford to feed the donkey once the hay had been eaten, vets bills, where it would sleep and who would pick up the donkey s**t.

Money was handed over from the EU, vast amounts were then creamed off the top, contracts were awarded at a price, the local bigwigs lived in cloverwhile the money rolled in.

There is being positive and being in denial. Why are you so intent on changing our views, so much that you get up before 8am(your time) on a Sunday morning to try and it hammer home to us?

Your time would be better spent having a "polvo manyanero" instead.

Dick Dasterdly

Yeh, you got it about right there JLFS.

I hope you got the message through this time with your donkey senario.

Basically they have been grabbing with both hands the huge funds that we have been throwing at them for long enough, though that source of supply has slowed down quite a bit in the last year or two as other basket cases are waiting their turn to be spoon fed.

I don't say it's all been wasted, some at least has been put to good use, but in many cases the total lack of foresight and their inability to plan ahead and do their sums correctly is costing them dear and could well continue to do so if they go into any more hairbrained schemes without properly thinking them through.

agoreira

Exactly my point, it was easy money, and it was somebody else's money, so no worries how it was spent. Just been reading this morning of the selling off on 68 official cars in Toledo, including a 337.00O euros Audi A-8 blindado which has hardly ever been used. What an earth justifies the boss of Toledo/Castilla la Mancha spending that sort of money?

Madridboy

Maybe it's because he likes the other sex, maybe every journalist in the country knows this and maybe they are too scared of what would happen if they went public with this so maybe that's why the general public don't know.......maybe my OH and a journalista have seen this first hand.

jackytoo

Ahhh the plot thickens. Poor lad he must have been under tremendous pressure if it's true.