WHEN YOUR BEST ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH

BILL ANDERSON A PUBLIC SERVANT

THERE are a lot of nervous politicians around Spain at the moment. With Local Elections taking place throughout the country on May28, many will no doubt lose their comfy and well paid positions and may need to return to the regular world of work.

On February 22, I travelled up to Mijas Pueblo for the monthly council meeting (called the Pleno). There was a lot of activity on entering the village with white lines and zebra crossings being painted whether they needed it or not. Actually they didn’t need it. Compared to some of the neglected areas in the urbanisations, the untouched white lines of Mijas Pueblo were gleaming in the morning sunshine and were certainly in acceptably good nick.

I tried for months to get a zebra crossing repainted and was informed by the police that it was perfectly OK. A local worker had been killed on crossing the road at night and the dark grey zebra crossing was barely visible during the day let alone at night on a poorly lit road with street lighting that had been out for months.

Clearly, local politicians think we are stupid enough to believe that getting busy three months before an election creates amnesia about all the things not done in the previous four years: the requests ignored, the pleas not listened to. I don’t think that my municipality is any worse than what I presume is repeated across councils all over Spain at the moment: fix­