ARCHIVED - New auditorium planned for Mazarrón as the Town Hall purchases old Guardia Civil HQ
The abandoned building in the centre of Mazarrón has been purchased for 430,000 euros
The Town Hall of Mazarrón has completed the purchase of the former Guardia Civil headquarters on Avenida Constitución in the centre of the town, a building which has been in disuse for many years, for 430,000 euros, and now intends to press ahead with plans to demolish it and build in its place an auditorium.
The new building will also be home to the municipal music school and the Maestro Eugenio Calderón town band according to a report in la Verdad.
430,000 may seem a lot of money to pay for a building simply in order to demolish it, but in some ways the price is a bargain, as the Ministry of the Interior originally put it up for auction in 2013 at a starting price of 1.4 million euros, basing their figure on a valuation performed in 2006. No bids were received, but now the completion of the purchase (at just 10,000 less than was announced seven years ago) has been announced this week, local councillor Ginés Campillo explaining that the old Guardia building occupies a prime plot of 3,000 square metres on one of the main roads into and out of the town.
No timeframe has been announced for the construction of the auditorium, and the first stage is for design suggestions to be received regarding what is to be built after the demolition of the old building. At the same time, the land will have to be re-classified by the Town Hall as being designated for cultural rather than administrative purposes, and it can be assumed that it will be some time before the proposed auditorium begins to take shape as other projects such as the rehabilitation of the Casino and the “casona” of La Cañadica are still pending, all demanding resources and significant investment.
The former Guardia Civil headquarters was built in the mid-20th century on land donated to the Ministry by the Town Hall, and does not enjoy protected status.
It is an unlikely venue for an auditorium, lacking easy parking, and is close to the former Universidad Popular building which was vacated in favour of the large cultural centre, which has a perfectly serviceable and rarely used sala which has a stage and plenty of seating. The cultural centre is itself located at the end of a residential road, again in a most unlikely setting.
Image 2: the smart Cultural Centre
This is all fairly close to the ruined castle, in which a former PP council spent a significant amount of money attempting to build an open-air auditorium; this plan failed when the stands collapsed due to inadequate surveying of the site having failed to warn about the underground galleries beneath the castle grounds, undermined by mining, wasting a significant sum of money.
There has been talk of building an open-air auditorium down in the port, where the summer tourists can access it more easily, as the town itself is little visited by the summer tourists who spend their money in the port, but to date the plan has consisted mainly of erecting stages in the paseo during the summer months.
Although Mazarrón does have several spaces which are used for concerts, it does lack a larger auditorium, but the almost complete absence of any musical events in the municipality does beg the question of whether one is even necessary or if it will be used, and whether bang slap in the middle of this much transited urban space where there is always a lack of parking is the correct location for such a building, or whether it should be perhaps closer to the cultural centre or other facilities.
A significant sum of money was also spent when the town hall insisted on moving the indoor market into another building it had purchased right in the middle of the same street, a move which proved to be an absolute disaster as the same old problem of lack of parking prevented shoppers from being able to park anywhere near it. In the end, the indoor market was abandoned as traders moved back to the square in which the indoor market had formerly been housed and leased shops instead; at least there was now some parking as the indoor market had been demolished!
For the moment, residents could argue that the municipality has other pressing needs which would affect the daily lives of its residents to a much greater degree on which it could be spending such large sums of money.