Wanted: People in Benidorm

thousands of migrant workers

And it's not a plea for extra holiday makers in these days of economic doom, gloom and despondency. It's all about the way that the central government of Spain allocates money for public expenditure in the towns and cities across the country.

It's done on a population basis using the number of people officially registered with the local town hall – in Benidorm's case 70,000 - as a guideline. As you can imagine, a budget based on this figure is woefully inadequate when the town's population is swelled by thousands of migrant workers and millions of tourists in the high summer months.

Town Hall authorities are trying to encourage more people to register as residents to get the population figures up to at least 75,000 people. This however may be difficult as for some reason a great majority of Benidorm's 'floating' population is officially based in the Basque region which has more advantages for people registered there than Benidorm.

6 January 2009 Stephen White.