Friday 10 Sep, Conil

We called in to a fancy goods shop on the main road out of the old quarter of Conil. It looked to have gifts which were better than the usual seaside souvenir tat. I asked why the usual Conil Friday outdoor market wasn’t being held today. It was because the town’s Feria had just ended and they hadn’t properly cleared the market space. The owner turned out to be English and had been there as long as we have been visiting Vejer – eight years. He said things had changed a lot in Conil in recent years. I said that from the way he said so, it sounded as though he didn’t think all the changes were for the better. He said the town was virtually bankrupt. It couldn’t afford even to keep the streets clean nor to pay the contractors who were doing the perennial road repair jobs. This, in spite of the fact that tourist numbers were increasing ever more steeply year upon year. The town just seems either ignorant, unwilling, too indolent –or, most likely, a mixture of all of these - to take its rightful share of the prosperity all these tourists should bring. It is easiest to make those, already legitimately paying their local taxes, keep on paying more than to pursue those who make pots of money out of the tourists, without paying anything, for a rightful contribution. The Friday outdoor market was a case in point. Eight years ago it was a market for local artisans to sell their handicrafts. To encourage them they waived the usual street hawkers licence fees. Now it’s largely retail chain surplus stock but the stallholders still don’t pay a site fee. As tourist numbers have burgeoned, so have the numbers of illegal street traders who are stealing the trade from the rate-paying shop-keepers literally on their doorsteps. Neither the local police nor the council seem willing to challenge and move these people on. Last week a couple of Argentinians had started selling their wares – which were gifts and fancy goods like his – on the pavement outside his shop. When he challenged them, they produced a document saying that they were artisans entitled to sell their own handiwork without having to pay local taxes – in Argentina! After almost coming to violence, they did move on, but only to a shop front with a less forceful person inside.