in my village it is impossible to walk down to the local shops without three or four detours now due to the renovations going on in every calle.
i think mr.zapatero is to blame but congratulations to the man. he has invested millions of euros in the infrastructure of every village in spain. we can see where the money has gone,all local people working on the renovations buying local building materials.
on my little calle alone three quarters of the casas have been, or are being ,renovated. and therein is the problem. we have been living with dust,cement,noise and rubble for the last three months and it doesnt look as if it is going to end any time soon. i am looking forward to a quiet christmas,hopefully without a jig-a-pig waking me up at seven am on xmas morning. ah well.
does anyone else out there have the same problems going on around them(and i don't mean the usual large building sites) but local renovations on a large(!!)scale?? interesting to find out. ole.

The only sign here of money being pumped into the economy is a sudden unexpected interest in tarmacing previously undrivable concrete roads! (or, in the most recent case, a road that just plain didn't need doing...)
As for house works, well platforms still keep going up, despite talk of anything since 1994 being deemed illegal

They are spending a fortune on the roads round here, but the train service past Fuengirola has hit a big finance problem and could be years away, they have only been given 0.1 % of the money needed.

Same here, our village is having new kerb stones put in and they're changing the shape of the roads at all the junctions, no idea why???!! All the bin areas are being given little walls around them. Then we have major roadworks where they're building the new high speed motorway to Marbella, so almost every major road in my area is being worked on, which means wherever I go I get stuck in hold ups by those little men with their stop/go boards!!! and of course then there's the mass expansion of Málaga airport!

The noise and dust has become the norm!

Jo xxx

It is all down to this

thats the one,,plan e i believe its called. there are little and large(my favourite comedy trio) signs all over the village. now then, last year the town hall let "certain" people know that if they put in an estimate for work to be done on their casas,they would get the grant. as long as local people were involved in the work etc. as you can imagine,loads of people put in and as far as i can see,most have been given permission.
when a house is being renovated,they put a little green plastic sign up to say it is urban renovation etc and money is coming from central government. different folks for different strokes i say, cos if the same was being done in the uk(and with the broon fella in charge that will never happen,he is only content to give our billions away to "needy" causes),but just say it was being done over there, they would be up in arms about the noise and the dirt and the dust etc.
but over here i can see the locals look at the piles of rubble and they are saying "good old manuel, he is earning". also all our lovely old fountains are being replaced and to my mind they should have left them in peace. rant over.ole.

A lot of he road and paving work is to bring Spain in line with EU regulations. Many more of the roads on Ibiza now have kerbs and a path. The paths are designed for wheelchair users but in many cases are impassable for wheelchairs because lampposts that were once at the side of a road are now in the middle of the new paths that have been built around the posts. It's comical in a way but not much use to the people that these paths were built for.

Thats the irony of Spain. Cos quite frankly the paths in my village (new and as they were) wouldnt fit a wheelchair, nor would I wanne see someone trying to get up the hill in anything other than a high powered electric buggy...... and as for going down towards the bar WWWWEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

I guess they're getting a bit of EU funding for this ???????

Jo xxx

Not been out for 5 weeks but when we were last there, the calle's were being tarmac'd street lighting installed and a huge new casita being dug behind some of the houses. Our village is not big enough to warrant footpaths, you could call it a one road village with a couple of cul de sacs of it So small it only has 1 cafe bar, 1 church and no shops at all.
It was evident though that money was available for public works, not too much to show for the private owner though.

The local politicians around here make no secret of the fact that they are spending enormous amounts of money renovating the local infrastructure, even if it doesn’t need renovating, to provide employment for local people.

The centres of places like Torrevieja and Los Montesinos have been building sites for most of the year and they are nowhere near complete. When I watch the men at work, and they work long hours, they seem to be very meticulous, every little paving stone needs to be exactly level, and I’ve seem brand new underground pipes replaced with more brand new pipes.

It all makes sense to me.

seems it is a rash on your houses doesn't it? just been for walkies with wife and dog and took some photos of the destruction that abounds. thinking about it now with a clear mind, it is worse than i imagined in the first place. with the wind swirling about the village,you can't see too far in front for the used cement bags being blown about.
but,but,but, i think i agree with what is being done, zapatero is trying to help his people out,and the houses that have been finished look nice. most of them are what can be called council,but the private ones needed doing too,the roofs being the main fault with many of them.
for far too long the so-called "white villages of andalucia" have been neglected and forgotten by both local and national government. we don't get the tourist hoards up here(some say good,i am not too sure about this either). our mayor is a nice fella and very welcoming to foreign incomers. he understands that foreigners buying up old houses to do up as either holiday homes or permanent homes equals money to the council. simples really.

Which creates another job for somebody in the future when the kerbs have to be taken out so the path can be widened enough for a wheelchair.

Ah yes - but just think of the bureaucracy & time wasting if it were being done in the UK - bollards out, roads closed, traffic lights for days if not weeks.... little men with stop/go boards are actually much more user friendly!

Is this a basic difference in the psyche of the british and the spanish. From the posts here, people seem to be very critical of the reconstruction and renovation: citing noise, dust, inconvenience and maybe poorly planned execution. However, the overall spanish view seems to be that it's a good thing as it regenerates the economy, gets money into people's pockets and provides jobs.
Sounds to me like the difference between a pessimistic outlook and optimism.

There's been major works going on in our nearest village/town for many months now with most of the steep, narrow streets being block paved with new pipes first being laid underneath - and very nice they look too!

The only trouble is that they tend to start work on two of three through roads at the same time, so trying to drive through the one-way system is a nightmare with diversions everywhere - and of course no warning notices until you actuallyarrive at a road block. I tried to get to the library one day to use the ADSL and after a detour which took me back out into the campo I just had to give up!

We've also had new street lamps, 2 new children's playgrounds and wooden fence things round all the dustbins

Does anyone know where to find out about the house renovation grants? Our campo house is 200 years old and has a rickety lean-to on the back, built with no foundations and as we have quite frequent earth tremors it'd be nice to know if we could get it sorted as I'm always worried that it'll tumble round my ears one day

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