Don’t be surprised to see guys dressed like this strolling the paralia in the future. According to an article in Taxydromos Newspaper (link here) Skopelos has become “twinned” with the Spanish city of Atarfe. What do the two communities have in common? Mayor Michalis says in the article that the reasons for twinning are mostly cultural though both communities produce olives.
According to the EU Twinning website, the project of “twinning” municipalities across Europe has the “goal of friendship, co-operation and mutual awareness between the peoples of Europe.”
One of the things that makes Atarfe famous is its covered “corrida arena” where concerts, sporting events and, of course, bullfights are held.
Here is a view of Atarfe from the air.
Surely that should be ¡Atarfe! You can read more about the place, including its, er, Pink Floyd Stadium (named because Roger Waters once played there) here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atarfe
If you find yourself ineluctable drawn to the link to a Spanish newspaper report of the mayor being charged for allowing the release of 120,000 tonnes of toxins from a reprocessing plant in the town (he got off, as most Spanish mayors do…), I should stress that that was a former mayor, and the current one is a member of PSOE, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español, who are nice.
Well, most of them.
As I understand, one of the previous mayors was indicted for actions he took surrounding the development of the resort “Medina Elvira Club de Golf”. I saw this: http://www.eyeonspain.com/community-forum/13717/court-probes-granada-golf-complex.aspx
The twinning thing is interesting in that municipalities chose their twin in a manner like online dating. I’m not sure what members of two depressed economies can bring to the table other than strategies for survival. From the arial photo it seems that Atarfe, with lots of factories, doesn’t depend on solely tourism for income.
The twinning site has groups of communities who are twinned for a specific issue – “Protecting Europe’s Coastline Together” includes communities from Latvia, Sweden, Portugal, Italy, Estonia, France, and Lithuania. That makes sense.
I see from a map that Atarfe is just outside Granada, and that its mayor hails from the beautiful medieval town of Úbeda, in the middle of the biggest olive growing region in Spain, so our mayors will have olives in common.
In the Netherlands twinning has recently been given up as there was no added value any longer and the costs of the project became a burden. The exchanges (read travels) were merely on a civil servant level and the government want to cut down on expenses.
Bull fighting is a horrendous thing and should be abolished…. Skopelitans are willing to say so to their new twin city inhabitants?
put this… “bullfight atarfe flickr” .. .into googleimages to see some photos of a doomed bull getting his revenge at the Corrido in Atarfe.
Another trick is to go to googlemaps and ask for Atarfe Spain, then go to streetview and look around. The streetview icon is the little yellow man near the zoom control. Click and drag him/her to the map and you will be on the ground.
Maybe we could have the Running of the Bulls as they do in Pamplona along the Paralia – or should we use the little goats we have here in the hills
That would really give the tourists something to think about. Every week on Tuesdays at 7pm throughout the summer – entrance free !
I wonder if whoever initiated this twinning will be arranging for “cultural exchanges” to be made during this period of extreme austerity by email or whether it will entail expensive annual visits by councillors from both towns. Does anyone have a fiver they want to wager?