ROAD TO NOWHERE

The world recession has hit Spain badly, and although the politicians shouted triumph when 600 people found jobs last month, Tenerife is suffering even worse than the mainland.
The building industry was dragged along in the wake of the time-share boom and subsequent collapse, and thousands of jobs were lost - six hundred hardly makes a dent in those figures.

The village where we live is surrounded by unsold apartments and houses - they call them 'villas' but they look like terraced houses to me. I walked past these this morning and I think two might be occupied. I heard that the builders were selling them off at 'cost price' = 60,000 euros.

One of the more sensible laws introduced here in the past decade was that any 'urbanisacion' must begin with its infrastructure - roads, pipes, electricity -to avoid the nightmare of people buying property without these basic amenities. The unfortunate aftermath of this is that when the building firms went bust they left behind hundreds of roads that lead nowhere and serve nothing.

The piles of building materials have gone and the fences have decayed, so people walk the empty streets for exercise or to let their dogs crap on the rough ground, careful not to fall foul of the many traps where desperate, hungry people have taken the drain covers and stripped electricity cables to sell for scrap.

There are a couple of security men - one obviously sleeping in an old portable site office - but apart from that an eerie silence hangs over these roads to nowhere.