Motril Town Hall announced yesterday that they had temporarily closed down the fairground attractions on Avenida Norman Bethune.
The Mayor said that the affected apparatus would be closed for 48 hours (until Tuesday) when a full inspection and report could be carried out. However, all the other fiesta activities would carry on as announced in the fiestas agenda.
The Mayor, Luisa García Chamorro, made a point of visiting the boy’s family, who was discharged from Hospital Santa Ana yesterday morning. She told them that she had put “all municipal resources” at their disposal.
The Spokesman for the local PSOE opposition party, Francisco Sánchez Cantalejo, expressed his party’s solidarity with the victim and said that the would be examining the local administration’s handling of the affair, especially, the Policía Local report to see if the the Mayor’s cabinet had carried out all the necessary actions for the organisation of the fiestas.
Editorial comment: The fairground attraction owner said that he had obtained verbal permission from both the Mayor’s office and from the Councillor for Fiestas, to set up his equipment but that he did not possess actual written permission when the police asked him for it on the Saturday night, following the accident.
He was given an opportunity to phone the Town Hall for them to confirm that they had extended verbal permission but they declined to confirm this… which probably explains why the Mayor was quick to be seen visiting the family.
If the Mayor could “deny” that the cabinet had extended verbal permission, she could ‘dodge the bullet’ in the face of the elections on the 29th of this month. There is the possibility that the fairground-attraction owner never bothered to obtain a permit, which is highly unlikely given that his attraction was included in the municipal publicity for the fiestas.
Then there is the question, is it not normal practice for the Policía Local to inspect all such apparatus after it is set up and before being put into operation to make sure that it has passed all the safety inspections and has the necessary paperwork?
Readers could be forgiven for concluding that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark…”
(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalusia)