A man has been sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for buying nisporas, using Mickey-Mouse IOU’s – is nothing sacred? Sneaky A.S.C. swizzled an Almuñécar company out of 34 tonnes of nisporas, back in April 2000.

Not only does the man also have to pay a fine of 1,620 euros, but he also has to compensate the said company with 32,340 euros for the goods received, but not paid for, when he passed himself off as the owner of an Italian company, Andrea Bellizi. On his first visit he ‘bought’ 1,280 kilos of this fruit from Regatrans S.L. in cash. He then returned several days later and snapped up 3,236 kilos, returning on several other occasions, but this time handing over IOU’s instead of reassuring bank notes.

You can imagine how miffed the company was when a few days later their bank started returning the IOU’s through lack of funds.

Meanwhile, up in the misty kingdom of Jete, farmers are carrying out lethal hand-to-hand combat with vicious flies that are vandalising their chirimoya crop! I’ll continue whilst you knuckle back a tear…

Jete’s star crop is the chirimoya, known as the ‘Fino de Jete.’ It is well sought after – unfortunately, not only by humans, because the Mediterranean fly start to tap dance on the blighters once the summer heat comes in, which is when our dangling victims are fully occupying fattening themselves up.

The Mayor has decided that the Town Hall is going to head the charge because these damned flies are decimating the crop production of the village. Calling on the Departamento de Sanidad Vegetal de la Consejería de Agricultura y Pesca (more commonly known as ‘Manolo and the Boys’) he has promised any farmer that wants to join, a 90% subsidy on the expense of combating this plague.

So, Ladies and Hamster Trainers, if you should happen to come across a farmer running around in circles, hotly pursued by a cloud of flies, you will know that they are hard at it.

The Guardia Civil has filed a charge against two men from Almuñécar for allegedly having started a mountain fire. Both 50-year-old G.M.J and his 30-year-old North-African helper stand accused of burning off tree cuttings, which resulted in the incineration of entire trees from the mountainside, together with not impressed fauna and other flora. We’re talking about 60,000 sq/mt in the Paraje Los Bañuelos area of the municipality of Almuñécar.

Smile – you’re on camera! We’re not talking about snooping CCTV’s that adorn just about every street corner in dear old England, but ones that are set up at the top the life-savers elevated platform on Playa Puerta del Mar (in front of the Paseo del Altillo, more or less) and the Peñones del Santo (Cross on the Rock). These cameras will transmit images of frolicking beaches to the less fortunate citizens of Northern Europe. The Folks from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg can experience, then, this masochistic joy from the ease of their own damp armchairs… bless them.

The idea is that our Northern neighbours will hop on an aeroplane the instant their glazed eyes fall upon our sun-drenched beaches. Whether it will work or not, is another question – we shall see when the one-year project concludes, no doubt. It’s certainly a novel idea, isn’t it?

The images can also be seen on Internet, at www.feratel.com. I just visited it myself, and it is not complicated. You just chose the country and then town and then select the streaming mode. There is another way, of course, but that involves getting your bones down to the said beach, so as the Spanish say, “¡Sin fanatismos!”

Meanwhile, a couple that used to run a computer shop have been rumbled for alleged Internet fraud! The Guardia Civil moved in and arrested a 22-year-old German man and the 21-year-old Spanish lass that owned the business premises in La Plaza Doctor Álvarez.

The couple reportedly offered mobile telephones via the website www.segundamano.es. However the luckless purchaser instead of receiving the promised telephone received only a small package containing sand. The couple were offering the Nokia N-95 for between 290 and 400 euros, according to the police.

Complaints began rolling in from the 9th of January onwards, from miffed purchasers in Cuenca, Madrid, Palma de Mallorca, Gandía (Valencia), Liérganes (Cantabria) and Badajoz. Furthermore, it has come to the attention of the police through their investigations that other such packages have been sent, and so they have contacted the recipients to advice them to make an official complaint, if they feel they have been swindled.

This is starting to sound a bit like Noah’s Ark, because the protagonists of our articles seem to come in two by two’s. Two youths were arrested by the Guardia Civil for beating a pizza delivery boy senseless. Some people can be quite irritable over the temperature of their pizzas, it seems.

The incident occurred near the Paseo Reina Sofia (i.e., close to Las Góndolas) around 22.20h on the 17th of May (the incident wasn’t reported in the press until the 4th of June, however). One of the culprits stood in the centre of the road to flag the moped rider down. When he stopped, 19-year-old J.S.Z. reportedly told him to hand over all his takings (“Your pizza money or your life,” sort of thing.) The pizza lad refused, which was when J.S.Z. snatched the helmet from the lad’s head – naturally, the strap was not fastened – and began to beat him with it. The successive blows to his head with the very device that was supposed to protect him from head injuries left him unconscious and seriously injured, which is when J.S.Z then riffled his pockets, allegedly. The lad had been carrying 400 euros in takings, which were quickly transferred to their new owner. The assailant then made his escape on the back of his accomplice’s moped.

Two days later, when the victim had recovered sufficiently, he reported the incident at the Guardia Civil. Very soon the police had managed to track down a witness who claims to have seen the nasty two, making off on a yellow moped, moments after the incident. This same witness had also made a note of the moped’s number plate, fortunately.

The police soon rounded up the two culprits and the victim made a positive identification after looking through some mug shots – furthermore, according to the police statement, the accomplice admitted to the facts with his own lawyer present.

The Department of the Environment has awarded the contract for protection of Playa Velilla from erosion. Ferrovial Agromán S.A. will be using the 1,257,070-euros budget to erect a breakwater next to the water park, Aquatropic. The construction work will last 21 months.

The beach concerned has always lost great swathes of sand - shingle and pebbles, better said – each spring and autumn. In fact, on at least one occasion the Paseo itself has taken a pounding, necessitating repair work. The Town Hall had requested that this coastal-defence work coincided with the construction of the Velilla underground car park. Pray mightily, Folks that the said car park doesn’t take a further 21 months to complete.

Ten percent of homes in Almuñécar, Salobreña and Motril now have ‘intelligent’ water meters that permit water saving. It was our own Mayor, who is still the Chairman of the area council (La Mancomunidad de la Costa Tropical), who pointed out that the Costa Granadina is on a par with Málaga and Sevilla as far as the implantation of these devices go.

Basically, these new meters are digital ones and are capable of detecting leaks in the mains-water network, as well as registering ‘unusual water consumption.’ Furthermore, it no longer requires the meter man to make his rounds, as they can be read electronically by remote control – sneaky, eh? It also means that whereas the water board would give you an estimate consumption when they were unable to read the meter, under the new system this will no longer be necessary.

To replace all the water meters in the area, it will cost the private water company, Aguas y Servicios, around one million euros, but this sum will be fully recuperated after twelve years, during which time around 90% of the existing analogical meters will have been replaced.

There were two events in the Parque Majuelo last month: the Annual Associations Fair and the Gastronomic Fair, both of which enjoyed an excellent turn out. There is no way that I can find room to offer one photo of each stall in either of the fairs, so I have included an overview of one of them; i.e., the Gastronomic Fair.

Twenty-five different restaurants and bars participated, offering probably over a hundred different tasty morsels and dishes. On the Friday, which is when the fair kicked off, not only the Mayor was present, but also representatives of five different towns that are twinned with Almuñécar, each have their own stands: Livry Gargan (France), Cerveteri (Italy), Kelibia (Tunisia), Furstenfelbruk (Germany) and Alhucemas (Morocco).

On a political note, it was a bit of a turn up for the books when the Town Hall Secretary forced the Mayor to collaborate with ongoing judicial enquiries by submitting the documentation that had not been forthcoming. It is a well known secret (an oxymoron if ever there was one) that the Town Hall has never been keen on punctual collaboration, but so ‘unhappy’ was the Municipal Secretary about the state of things – because it is she whose responsibility it is to supply requested documentation – that during a council meeting the pending requirements were officially recognised and the Mayor self-imposed a 24-hour deadline to come up with the reluctant documents – the buildings photocopy machines must have thrown a fit once confronted with the demand. The Winds of Change or simply a storm in a teacup?

I had to have a good chuckle when the local press was called to witness the destruction of confiscated contraband; i.e., pirate DVD’s and counterfeit brand-name items etc.

The municipal workmen had dumped a whole pile such goods to await its fate. All told, the diligent local forces of law and order had confiscated: 1,000 pairs of sunglasses, 500 polo-shirts, 400 handbags, 100 perfume bottles, 400 belts, 100 pairs of shoes, 15,000 CD’s/DVD’s, 1,500 baseball caps, 150 watches and 500 wallets.

My chuckle, by the way, was caused by the steamroller that passed twice over the sunglass but failed to smash them.

So here we are, ready to confront Summer 2008, nervously, evidently, because what with the national economic climate, the price of petrol and the nonexistent autovía, the defects actually in the town, once you’ve managed to get here, are daunting, as well.

As suspected, the two underground car parks are far from ready and the single-lane track that is supposed to be a substitute for the ‘missing road’ is hardly likely to make much difference.

If you try to get to Velilla via the Velilla road, you stand a good chance of using a tank of petrol up trying to pass through that way, and should you be so foolish as to try the main road, you will soon realise the foolhardiness of your decision.

But the two things that most worry the average Almuñéquero are the reappearance of the dreaded jellyfish and above all else, another rubbish strike right in the middle of summer. There exists a possibility that this could come about - at least, that is what is rumoured if you speak with people connected with rubbish collection.

Yet, let us hope that neither come to pass, or better said, let us hope that the jellyfish pass by without stopping and the rubbish collectors pass by to pick up our rubbish!