Help create the Calasparra of your dreams: this is an invitation from the Mayor as the new municipal website to facilitate the active participation of residents comes online.
If you have an idea, a project, a dream for Calasparra, the Town Hall wants to hear from you through the website: Imaginacalasparra.com. Maybe you want to start a business, a bar, a souvenir shop, a “casa rural” or simply offer Bed and Breakfast at your home. The Mayor has promised the Town Hall will “actively support any viable project.”
“These are difficult times,” said the Mayor at the official opening of the website, “we need imagination and we have plenty of people with imagination in Calasparra. This is our chance to create the Calasparra of our dreams with the participation of every resident.”
The webpage is exclusively to facilitate Calasparra residents and Calasparrians living in other parts of Spain presenting ideas and projects to local authority. The “active support” of the Town Hall may take the form of information, monitoring meetings, subsidies, building and opening licences, reduced rents for land or commercial premises etc.
In some cases residents may want to present an idea or project that the Town Hall or some other organization will undertake and in others it may be that a resident holds “a long held dream” that can finally be realized.
There are different sections on the website: commerce, industry, education, fiestas, housing, youth, sport, new technologies, social wellbeing, agriculture, culture, tourism, equality, work and employment, environment, urban development, innovation, infancy and others. There are different forms of help listed under the various sections and some ongoing projects are included.
The revitalization of the “casco antiguo” (old town) began with the housing and museum project behind the new hotel and now includes a massive investment to improve the dwelling in the Los Santos area. There will be a new access from Los Santos to the centre of town via a new road and a public park and now the Mayor is looking for people with ideas to regenerate the area.
“The old town has lost its role in the commerce of the town. We envisage a street of artisan shops or a square. There will be special treatment for new businesses in this area,” he said, “with subsidized rents and active support for franchises.”
He noted that the old part of Calasparra constituted almost half of the town but added that assistance would be available to new businesses in other parts of the municipal area.
“Think about what you can do for yourself, in these days when creating your own employment and being your own boss is often the best alternative, and think about what you can do for Calasparra. We need to lose our embarrassment at pitching ideas,” says the Mayor, “for our ideal town, house, park, school or landscape.”
Under the Housing section the Mayor emphasized that a cooperative housing project in Calasparra “was a long overdue.” He pledged that the local authority would concede municipal land and projects for any local housing cooperative of young people, or other residents, and he specifically referred to municipal land available in front of the emergency health services building at the top end of town.
On the Industrial Estate land will be offered at a discount of up to 50% and warehouse space will be offered to young business people with “viable ideas or projects.”
“We need to revitalize the local economy and create employment and we have plenty of land available,” he added.
On the topic of agriculture the Mayor made special reference to the “growing demand for organic products which are free from chemical pesticides.” He called for “diversification” and suggested growing maize and other alternative energy products.
“Here in Calasparra we have the conditions and the climate for agriculture and we have the farmers. There is a worldwide deficit of foodstuffs and we can compete. We can exploit the public spaces outside the town for livestock and farmers can grow nectarines, grenadines, kakis and figs. There are different strains of pear and apple available now. These are fruits rarely seen in Calasparra. We need to pay more attention to the changes in products and experiment with new produce,” he said.
The local area already boasts the largest photovoltaic energy plant in Europe and the Mayor’s project for 2011 is for Calasparra to be energy self sufficient. The “greatest benefit” would be to install solar panels on private and industrial premises, he said, which would mean owners could “sell” the excess electricity produced to the network.
On local tourism the Mayor declared “there was still much to do.” His plans include utilizing municipal buildings as small hotels, pensions etc. and encouraging residents to consider holiday lets in their homes.
“Calasparra needs tourist accommodation and a small family hotel could provide an income and work for the whole family or a tiny pension with just a couple of rooms. It doesn´t have to be on a large scale,” he said.
The idea behind the website is that residents commit themselves to the future of Calasparra and help themselves through self employment and private projects.
“It is not only the Town Hall that has to do things,” he said, “residents need to get involved with private initiatives which create self employment and employment. The Town Hall is committed to actively support any viable project.”
Imaginacalasparra. com is in Spanish and applicants will need to present their projects in Spanish.
