DON´T FORGET!!!
Edition 295
www.thecourier.es
Friday 28th October 2016
YOU CAN'T MAKE IT UP! La Paloma Car Park Shocker
BY ALEX TRELINSKI
P
ilar de la Horadada council have been ordered to cough up nearly two and a half million euros for an unused car park at the controversial and unfinished La Paloma cultural centre. Pilar mayor, Ignacio Ramos, has said the authority will appeal against the ruling handed out by an Elche court last week in another twist involving a building that over the years has made national headlines over its spiralling costs. The car park order involves the constructon of the cultural centre, which was never completed, with the court saying that since the contractor got no benefit from operating the finished car park, it lost out on all of the
income that had been promised and projected in the original contract. This in effect, according to the court, meant that Pilar council had broken their side of the contract and would have to pay compensation to the constructor. The building of the Centro Cultural Mariana Baches, nicknamed as La Paloma ,was originally budgeted at two point four million euros, but completion costs rocketed to 12 million euros, with four million already spent on the structure, before the project was mothballed by the previous Partido Popular administration in 2014. Socialist PSOE mayor, Ignacio Ramos, was attacked at the weekend by
the PP for what they regarded as a mismanagement of the situation, with calls for his
resignation. Ramos only came to power in May 2015, and tried to resuscitate the La Paloma project earlier this year, but his plans were opposed by the PP and the single independent Vecinos por el Pilar councillor, with those parties saying that his plans lacked specific information. Council spokesman Alfonso Armenteros emphasised at Monday's news conference that it was important that the cultural centre is completed as Pilar needs a library, auditorium, and museum, and called for all political parties to work together on achieving its completion. His comments were echoed by Ignacio Ramos who said that the whole issue should not be politicised.