Spotlight North: Alcudia now has almost 100 million in the bank

Last year, notes the administration, was a special one. In response to the crisis caused by the pandemic, certain taxes (e.g. terrace tax) were suspended and more staff were recruited. Even so, there was a profit of eight million, and the town hall carries no debt at all.

Having money in the bank for a rainy day makes perfect sense, but in Alcudia they’re waiting for storms of an apocalyptic nature, such is the size of the surplus mountain weighing down a bank vault (in metaphorical terms) and on which, bizarrely enough, the town hall pays interest - some 150 grand.

A reason why the town hall has so much spare cash is the cumulative effect of years of having been unable to spend it. The Spanish government has loosened the purse strings of the budgetary stability requirements decreed when the PP were in power. Yet rather than decreasing, the carried-forward surplus keeps increasing.

There are plans for what to do with some of the cash mountain, such as the modernisation of the beach balnearios. An important investment for structures that are some thirty years old, it is perfectly valid, and with any luck the balnearios might all be open, which hasn’t been the case this summer.

Meanwhile, however, might citizens of the municipality, those not in the port area or the old town, be wondering about other modernisation?