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Day 35/15 – Saturday 18th April –15 days of Spanish lock down

My battery has gone flat – really annoying as it was new in January when I had the car serviced at the main dealership. Trouble is when I jump start it, the alarm keep going off and I can’t turn the thing off! My neighbour appeared at his window a couple of times with eyebrows raised – alarms a loud at the best of times, but with the low level of ambient noise, it seems to be magnified many times over.

If you know Marbella , you will be aware that the extension of Ricardo Soriano – the main street that runs through the centre of Marbella, past the Hotel Fuerte Marbella, the old Marbella Fishing port towards the Quiron Hospital is Avenida Severa Ochoa.

Playa del Cable (Cable Beach) is the long, beautiful stretch parallel to the road that runs east towards Rio Real and the area where a new Four Seasons Hotel complex is planned. From the port heading East, sadly the backdrop to the beach is ninety percent car dealerships, showrooms and workshops. The entire hillside overlooking Severa Ochoa is the ‘poligano industrial’ – or light industrial trading estate – mainly automobile related workshops, with a few other warehouses and trades dispersed amongst them.Years back it must have been considered that this land was far enough out of town not to disrupt urban expansion.

From here you have wonderful sea views and the land would be perfect for property development and could be worth a fortune - after all the only way geographically the city of Marbella can expand is to the East.In fact, there was a proposal by Qatari investor Abdullah ben Nasser Al Thani (owner of Malaga FC) to build a new state of the art marina off Playa del Cable, capable of receiving super yachts and perhaps even cruise liners. I believe the proposal included acquiring the poligano land for the purpose of luxury housing development. Despite the elaborate plans and extensive negotiations over many years, for various reasons the deal new came to fruition.

So the weekly shopping trip was done using Hessia’s car – San Pedro Mercadona had the now familiar scene of queue of people spaced across the car park. Provision shopping itself is pretty much back to normal apart from the limited numbers they allow in the store and the fact that it takes much longer with all the in store spacing regulations. After an hour I returned home with several of our reusable bags filled and four 5 litre bottles of mineral water.

Hessia popped out later to go the pharmacy. She decided she needed a few more minutes of freedom, so took a longer route home and met a police checkpoint at Guadalmina! Every car was stopped - she was quizzed on where she lives, where she was going and why! The fines are pretty hefty for non-compliance of the lockdown. She was so shocked that she had been ‘caught out’ and sensed the policeman knew she was telling a white lie when she said she was going shopping! Finally he let pass telling her to ensure she does go shopping and then directly home.

When she walked in the house holding two five litre bottles of water, without her saying a word I knew exactly what had happened!!!

Hope you are keeping well and safe,

Anthony

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