We returned to Vienna on the 20th, and our neighbors (in Spain) emailed us about the 11 hours it took them to get home from the Alicante airport, normally an hour or less. A horrific story of washed out roads and bridges.
I just brought this up in MPSIMS, (maybe it belongs in Elections) because I was doing some follow up on news stories, and checking a few of the local blogs. It seems that some squeaky wheel citizens, both local and expat (not the the expats aren’t local, but you know what I mean, right?)
Anyway it seems that the area roads are all now passable, if not up to speed.
[Self Highjack]I noticed some references to earlier goings on, which we were aware of when we were purchasing the house. It seems that the area around my little village had been mostly voting Partido Popular (PP) when the Junta (regional government) de Andalucia was relilably Socialist (PSOE) so little regionil funds were released to this area. Funny thing, in 2004, that flopped, locally PSOE, regioally PP, and it took a little while, but the Junta de Andalucia (JA) declared that everything from construction contracts for roads and public services to private house construction permits were “illegal”.
Fine. Our solicitor said we didn’t have to worry because our home is a “restauracion” and not a problem. We will see, as the title deed and other documents descibe it as having 97 square meters under roof, whereas it is closer to 200.
[/Self Highjack]
During the flooding crisis, our local town council had a few diversions created around downed bridges and washed out roads so people could get to shops and fuel, etc.
Within just a couple of days, the JA said the diversions were illegal and had police stationed to prevent their use. Just this past weekend, however, enough noise was made by the combined local/expat communities that the roads and diversions are now “legal”.
It merely brings it home to me that polarization in politics is ubiquitous and something we all have to deal with, even at the bottom rungs ofthe ladder.