Market stall-holders in the municipality of Mogán, are up in arms, after their town hall took the opportunity of re-establishing stall subs to raise their monthly fees to the council by 46% per pitch. Mayor Bueno’s governing group, who also raised their own salaries last year, as well as business rates, while consistently failing to meet the needs of a sharp increase in social care provision, say they had planned to apply this increase back in 2020, however, due to the health crisis and the stoppage of the tourism sector, it was postponed, until now, when they have decided to apply it definitively.

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The Tamaragua Association of South Gran Canaria Markets, which represents 300 street market vendors that come to the towns of Arguineguín and Playa de Mogán to work, plan to gather this Monday, April 11, at the doors of the Municipal Offices in Arguineguín to show their outright rejection of this large increase in their expenses, which they consider utterly unaffordable.

The mayor of Mogán, Onalia Bueno, in typically charismatic style, was blunt in her statements made to Radio Sol Maspalomas, as reported by El Sur Digital GC, inviting the stall holders and merchants to leave the markets if they are not satisfied “this is very simple, whoever does not want to be there, should not be there”.

The mayor concluded by saying that, in her opinion, we have already reached the economic recovery and we must all contribute. She did not mention that fact that she charges her own parking tickets, taxis and lawyers’ expenses to the public administration of Mogán.

Comment: Bueno, who has been under a series of lengthy investigations over the last decade, and whose electoral fraud case, for which she and others were arrested and brought to trial, was dismissed on a technicality having failed to find sufficient evidence within the 5 year period allowed, and despite facing several other ongoing cases, under scrutiny for possible prevarication and the obstruction of an ongoing investigation, appears to feel pretty bullet-proof right now, as she prepares for a hoped selection to stand, not with her own CIUCA party, currently in power, but, for the more established regionalist Coalition Canarias, in next year’s local elections.

Opposition parties are currently trying to position themselves in time to take on the serving mayores, la alcaldesa, whose surprise win in 2015 was compounded in an apparent landslide in 2019, following the fastest and largest growing number of postal votes of any local council in the Canary Islands, in Spain, and potentially in Europe.  Apparently there are a lot of Mogán residents who fervently support her candidacy despite their own absence from the ballot boxes.

Either Mogán residents want to work to find better representatives, or they are happy to continue with the ones sat on the pot for the last 8 years.  Luckily there has been a lot of urban development in that time, and with luck some of it will be finished in time for the next round of elections in Mogán 2023