- Man cannot live on bread alone.
Even the smallest community of homo sapiens cannot exist in any culture without being recognised as human beings. It means that our essential survival is not only accommodation, food and water; to live we need social contacts and educational development.
It is true that nowadays we could obtain many of these from advances in technology. But, especially now, when we have experienced many forms of lockdown due to Covid-19, we can recognise the most important fact of human nature, this is lack of social contact and restrictions in any cultural development, to mention just few: concerts, football matches, use of libraries etc.
Each and every one of us has many talents and need to develop and share them with each other. Orihuela Costa consists of many such people, especially as it is a cosmopolitan city of over a hundred nationalities who live here permanently. Yes we could have compared ourselves with cities such as London, Dublin, Paris or other metropolis. This sounds great but how can we share or develop anything when we do not even have a library in our city of 33,000 people who are registered on the Padron, not mentioning a Cultural Centre of any kind.
Is Orihuela scared of us in any form to allow us a Cultural Centre, with libraries, concert halls, classes of languages, music and dance halls, to learn new talents, exhibition hall and others. There we could learn different skills from over one hundred different nations. This could be a place to meet, to discuss, to encourage in development our Orihuela Costa. It would bring more business and more money as well to the coast.
We residents, are bringing many tourists here, not only families and friends. Every time we go back to our original birth place we used to talk how good it is in our city. It would be even better if we could say there is so much to do and see here on the coast?
We all feel badly let down, left behind by the authorities in Orihuela, who collect a good package of money in taxes from residents and non-residents who own properties in Orihuela Costa, that we now need to take our matter to higher authorities simply on a Humanitarian ground. We cannot exist here without a Cultural Centre any longer.
Most of this year, due to Covid 19 pandemic will be marked as “no public entertainment allowed”; also the Christmas festivities were cancelled, which is understandable in the circumstances, but, this is a normal representation of what Orihuela Costa encounters due to the lack of a place for public gatherings.
Last year´s celebration of the lighting of the Christmas tree did take place outside the Town Hall, although there was no festive mood to the celebration as we would like to encounter due to the noise of the N332, neither was it properly organised, lack of space nor much of a celebration program…it was a real shame for the children and performers.
The same goes for the classical concert taken place on the Playa Flamenca last year. Shame that “the open air auditorium” did not allow the audience to hear much.
In both instances, if we had a properly built hall for such a purpose (many people would be able to attend with trained staff to look after the events), surely then, the only option left to us is, we have to make our voices heard and cry out loud for our Cultural Centre.
Our cosmopolitan but newly developing city, could represent the culture of Spain and other countries of our multi-national citizens, which we could be proud of, but, we cannot neither show nor develop these cultural events as we have no “bricks and mortar” for this building.
It is a shame that with the large number of properties being built in Orihuela Costa we cannot beg for one more building which would satisfy the cultural appetite of the very young, adolescent, and older citizens, a Cultural Centre.
The proposed construction on land (currently a laid hard surface car park) adjacent to Zenia Boulevard has not been properly thought through, nor any consideration given to nearby residents.
On extremely busy occassions there is insufficient parking for visitors to Zenia Boulevard, so it overflows into nearby residential streets. The construction of the cultural centre will lead to further reduction in parking spaces available at Zenia Boulevard, thereby increasing the parking in surrounding residential areas. The road infrastructure cannot cope at the moment !
Once again a political party seem gung ho in their approach without engaging brain, just like the proposed relocaton of the Playa Flamenca Saturday market to the car parking area of Zenia Boulevard, without even considering the movement of vehicles both private and commerical that access that road network around Zenia Boulevard.
Opposition parties need to up their game if they want to make a difference, but they need to be more competent in what and how the propose change.