The Nerja Councillor for Environment, José Miguel Jimena, has refuted the claims by the Nerja Caves Foundation manager and PSOE leader Ángel Ramírez that the Junta de Andalucia has given the green light to the botanical gardens project and has budgeted an amount of €2,644,000 for 2011 for the project.
José Miguel Jimena stated that the announcement is an annual event which generally comes to nothing. He added that there is actually only €100,000 in the budget for the project and this could mean that, being an election year, a bit of soil will be moved around but little else.
The Councillor believes the Socialists also suspect that there is not actually any money available for the project, first stating that the start of work was imminent and then saying that it would extend to 2013.
The Council has not yet received a draft project from the Junta de Andalucia, despite repeated requests, which would tend to give credence to this being more a sort of electoral ploy.
Being an election year, of course, you never know what might suddenly happen.
One would hope that any party would actually check the budget before making any sort of definitive announcement, but maybe not. One of them has to be wrong.