In order to set the scene; a few years ago Steve a friend bought a villa just outside the little Andalucia town of Competa which lies a few kilometres from Nerja up in the mountains on the edge of the Natural Park of the Tejeda and Almijara mountain ranges.
When they sold their business and house in England Steve and his wife moved out to Spain to take up permanent residence. Steve, unlike many ex-pats has immersed himself in the local culture, and being a amicable gregarious sort of chap has cultivated a good relationship with the locals, learning the language and the local traditions.
My wife and I have visited them on several occasions and have taken great enjoyment at hospitality of the region and its people, with Steve as our guide we have spent many pleasurable hours exploring the surrounding countryside the little whitewashed mountain villages and partaking of the local foods and wines.
Unlike Britian there is a strong local community feeling in the area, perhaps something to do with the relatively recent civil war and its aftermath where in parts of the region constant fighting continued between the resistance movement and the Civil Guard until the 1950s. Immediate evidence of this communal spirit can be seen when one enters any of the local supermarkets, most goods on the shelf originate from a very localised area, although some international goods are available they will generally be found tucked away at the bottom of the shop, almost as is the owner is ashamed to display any evidence of his own disloyalty.
On one visit Steve suggested a picnic outing to an abandoned village about 12 kilometres away, it was known
locally as the lost village and had been abandoned in 1949 after the conflicts and reprisals that the inhabitants suffered forced them to leave the village, some of the survivors going to Competa and others to Frigiliana.
Every family tried to rebuild their lives as best they could, but every time they returned to visit they saw how their beloved village was turning to ruins, into a ghost town. Steve had heard about the village because the parents on of a bar owner he knew in Competa had been born there.
The day we visited it was just a collection of ruins, not one house was intact, most had been reduced to rubble, the streets were overgrown with scrub, with the only real evidence of any care, found in the little church yard, that was if not pristine at least it showed some indication of recent human activity.
My wife has just returned from holiday with our friends Val and Steve and the real highlight she tells me was a second visit to “the lost Village”, although it had been abandoned it had not been forgotten, everyone took a small part of El Acebuchal away in their hearts, especially the children, who watched bewildered as they and their families had to leave their houses, the place they all called home and the places where they played. Those same children dreamt of their return and seeing the village again, as it once had been.
In 1998 Virtudes and Antonio “El Zumbo” returned to El Acebuchal with the intention of making that dream a reality. The restoration of the first house was completed in 1998 shortly after my visit, and by the year 2003 mains electricity arrived in the village, the process speeded up by the creation of a neighbours association.
In 2005 the streets of the village were repaired and on 25th June of that same year, they reinaugurated the village of El Acebuchal with it’s first Mass in 50 years.
The village has now been fully restored but now 4X4 and tourism have replaced the mules from Torrox, Frigiliana and Nerja which were the life blood of the village as they were loaded up with fruit, vegetables and fish and taken over the mountain passes to the villages of Fornes & Jallena, where the mule handlers sold their goods and exchanged some for flour.
El Achebuchal was the meeting point and Inn to rest the animals, whilst the men ate, had a glass of aniseed liquor and commented on their journeys. Today the Inn has been reinvented as a tapas bar where according to my wife the lady of the house cooks some incredible real traditional dishes, which thankfully do not even nod in the direction of internationals cuisine.
In this the 50th year of the European Project instead of celebrating the fact for propaganda purposes, it might be better to reflect that the rebuilding of this village would have been possible in any case but has been achieved with the assistance and the grants from the EU Structural funds. The Junta de Andalucia financed the restoration of the villages to encourage rural tourism run by local people and The Junta de Andalucia (regional government) has received substantial resources from EUStructural Funds (ERDF, Cohesion Fund, ESF) to promote development policies.
So for me personally although I am delighted that the forsaken ruined village in the Andalucian mountains has been restored to something greater than its former state and the families who were forced out of their homes can now benefit for their hardship, and it can be reasonably argued that this is evidence of the good the Union can do. It is still a bittersweet thought that the money we are sending to the EU so that the people we do not elect can decide what can be done with it, might be better retained at home and spent on our own infrastructure our own hospitals our own villages which are dying because of lack on investment opportunities available to the people we do elect.
Is it not self-defeating for GB PLC to allow our money to be spent on increasing the tourist industry in rural areas of Spain and compensating Spanish families for grievances against the Spanish government when there are deserving villages in Britian that could do with some investment.
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