You Can’t Make It Up

Partido Popular opposition councillors have called on the Pilar de la Horadada mayor Ignacio Ramos to resign, after an Elche court ruled that the Pilar council will have to pay out two point four million euro to the company involved in a cultural centre project that became a national symbol for mismanagement. In something akin to a comedy film farce, the council has now been ordered by the court to pay the compensation to the contractor over a car park. As the building was never completed, the court ruled that the contractor received no benefits from running the car park and it missed out on all of the income that had been specified and projected in the original contract.

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The construction of the Centro Cultural Mariana Baches, nicknamed as La Paloma was originally budgeted at two point four million euro, but completion costs rocketed to 12 million euro, with four million already spent on the structure, before the whole project was mothballed by the previous Partido Popular administration in 2014.

Socialist PSOE mayor, Ignacio Ramos, has now been attacked by the PP for what they regard as a mismanagement of the situation. Ramos only came to power in May 2015, and tried to resuscitate the project earlier this year, but his plans were opposed by the PP and the single independent Vecinos por el Pilar councillor.