How hard is it to buy an amplifier and speakers in Marbella? As this week I’ve got a week off work, I’m planning to do a bunch of recording so figured I’d treat myself to an amp and speakers so I can hear my creations out loud rather than through my terrible Technics headphones. In the midst of the torrential rain I headed up to La Cañada, the out-of-town shopping mall to see what I could find.

La Cañada is an apparently illegal shopping centre built at the foot of the La Concha mountain and boasts the opportunity to get all of your shopping done under one roof. With dozens and dozens of stores, I’m bound to find something…

First stop, Worten. Worten, I’m guessing, is some kind of large electrical chain from Germany. They sell pretty much everything you can imagine, from kitchen appliances to TVs to iPods. Plus a bunch of music and DVDs. No joy there though, unless I wanted to pay for a home cinema set-up of some description. I found one unit that kind of fitted the bill, a small compact amp, disc player and speaker set from Sony. at 299€ it poked out of my price range.

Next stop, fnac. Fnac, the French home entertainment chain, has a much smaller selection, with a few decent amps (mhmm NAD…) again all of which were well out of my price range. Again, I could’ve afforded a nice home cinema set-up with 5 tiny speakers, or some shite computer speakers with a sub-bass bin. But that’s not what I need. Modern entertainment centres colour the sound – ordinarily removing the mid frequencies and raising the bass and treble. That typical r n b sound. I hate it, it sounds unrealistic, so I’m steering well clear of that nonsense.

And that’s it. That’s all the choice La Cañada has to offer.

And this is the problem with these out of town shopping malls. They slap everything under one roof, and by attracting masses of shoppers on this convenience factor, they kill the shopping business in the centre of the town. Marbella has suffered massively because of La Cañada, the city centre contains more closed shops than open ones and the shops that remain are just a few high-end fashion boutiques.

The Wall-Mart mentality of everything under one roof gives the appearance of massive choice, whilst in reality it robs us of choice. In Worten, there were scores of systems, home entertainment, home cinema, even some hi-fi units, but they’re all practically identical. Everything they offer is the same. No independent brands, all major multi-nationals. No real choice.

Marbella is simply too small a town to support a centre like La Cañada without it killing all other business. Which it has. Even fnac, with it’s large selection of music offers very little in the way of choice. You try finding a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club album in there. There once was a music shop in Marbella. Not anymore.

So this is progress. Everything under one roof. Masses of choice, choice of the same items. No variation. No catering for specific requirements. Lowest common denominator consumerism.

I ended up buying a pair of Sennheiser headphones. That was the best I could find.

“If you ask the standard Spaniard on the street, even today, the average Spaniard will say to you, hold on a minute – he fed us…”

Michelle Euesden uses corrupt Marbella Mayor Jesús Gil to justify her greed.

Morgan’s reply, the highlight of the show, sums it up perfectly.

“Well of course he did, but he was creating an entirely false market, where they’re all on the take, right, and black money was everywhere, no one payed any tax, and you all made a fortune…”

Piers Morgan’s recent TV show, Piers Morgan on Marbella, aired recently on British TV, and portrayed Marbella in a very 1 sided light. Not having TV myself I caught the show on YouTube and watched with much surprise as Piers painted a picture of jet-set glamour (God, I hate those words…) sickening and distasteful displays of wealth and a prosperous seaside hot-spot.

For someone with Piers’ journalistic credentials, the show was shockingly one sided as Piers not only solely focused on the wealthy, glossed over gangland crime and governmental corruption but strangely completely ignores the Spanish population and the negative effect the unbridled capitalism, greed and corruption has had on this coast.

The show, I’m guessing, was put together by Max Clifford and co, as it was more of an advert for the glitz and glamour than anything else. Shameful on the part of Piers Morgan, if you ask me. Max Clifford desperately wants to be mayor, as he thinks he could “clean up” Marbella. The problem is, he would be cleaning up the victims of the boom and not the perpetrators, like the wealthy featured in the show.

So what was missed out? Well, firstly, there was no discourse about the effect that the unbridled capitalism of the boom years had had on the coast. Sure, there are many here who made millions through legal means and brought their wealth here, but, as many inhabitants of Marbella are painfully aware, much of the wealthy on this coast got their through exploitation, corruption and crime. The gap between the rich and poor is gigantic – the average wage here is the lowest in Spain, yet you see massive villas and flash cars everywhere you go.

Piers is filmed driving along the Golden Mile, a stretch of road that passes through Marbella heading west towards Gibraltar, lined with The Marbella Club and the Puente Romano, two of Marbella’s most exclusive hotels. Yet if he’d have turned around and headed east towards Málaga, a different picture would have emerged, one of massive, unnecessary construction, vast tracts of empty apartment apartment blocks, homelessness, huge displays of graffiti telling of staff enduring 9 months of non-payment of salary at a luxury hotel (something I have experienced myself down here at an architecture firm called Diseño Earle) and masses of poverty. The average wage in the Málaga region is a little over 1,000€ per month. Given the kind of wealth on display on this show, you’d find that a little hard to believe. Piers does mention the over construction, but doesn’t go into the long term effects that it has clearly had on the economic landscape.

Unemployment in the province has nosed over 30%, shockingly high, but unsurprising given the amount of construction workers that migrated here during the boom.

In the show, an English couple were interviewed, claiming that Jesús Gil, one of the men behind the scandalous corruption of the Marbella town hall, was viewed as a “modern-day Robin Hood,” even going so far to say that the average Spanish person loves what has happened as he “created the thriving Marbella of today.”

Thriving Marbella? Not even close. Shops, bars and restaurants are closing left, right and centre. People are flocking back to their own countries in scores. The banks have nearly given up repossessing property because they’ve got too much. Thriving Marbella? That’s the biggest joke of all.

The couple interviewed, Michelle and Stephen Euesden, say all this as they are sipping wine in their hillside villa, whilst below, in the barrios, Spanish and English alike struggle to make ends meet every month thanks to the greed and extravagance of these kind of individuals. Their side of the story goes much like this: The over-development attracted thousands to the coast, money was brought into the area and the local economy was given a massive boost. In reality, what happened was lots of rich people got richer by under-paying their staff, denying them contracts and paying them in black money, essentially robbing off the local government of much needed social security contributions, and then when things got bad, fired the staff and hoarded their money, leaving masses of unemployment a practically deserted city and a crumbling economy. The town hall sold masses of land that wan’t theirs to sell, taking sizeable backhanders as they did so, whilst ignoring the things they should have been doing- improving life on the coast for everyone. Every piece of land they sold to developers was stolen from the local community, who were often employed by these developers who withheld wages as they went bust. The few involved got super rich, whilst little trickled down but hideous working conditions.

How they can sit their and give their “alternative view” of the corruption is simply disgusting. Tell that to the tens of thousands now out of work. Tell that to the victims of crime that the police are paid by the gangsters to ignore, tell that to the masses living in poverty. Tell that to the average person, who’s quality of life has been stifled thanks to the over-development destroying the local landscape. Tell that to their own employees, one ex-employee who I know personally, who described the working conditions at their newspaper as being “dreadful.”

So a modern day Robin Hood? A reverse Robin Hood more like – robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

The Marbella talked about in the show does exist, but it is supported by the working man, who is underpaid and exploited by greedy capitalists looking for the glamourous lifestyle and not wishing to contribute any work themselves. It’s a Marbella that is the minuscule minority – for everyone else here life is not all luxury and glamour and laziness. It’s hard work, a real struggle. Many who work here don’t get a contract. They don’t get bank holidays. They don’t get any kind of security for the simple reason that these people take more than their share.

For a supposedly socialist country, what happens in this town – the corruption of the town hall, the police being bought and sold and bribed, the exploitation of the working man, is simply shocking and disgusting. If Piers Morgan was worth his salt as a journalist, this would’ve quickly become the topic of the show.

The Chillun

Every Thursday at Terra Sana on the Golden Mile, Marbella, The Chillun have been given the chance to host a night of live music as the house band, called Roadhouse (in honour of Patrick Swayze…) and last Thursday was our first night. Marbella is a little thin on the ground music-wise, except of course for the endless supply of über trendy, over-priced & over-styled dance music bars, so this has potential to be pretty big.

The first night was great, a small turnout due to the limited time to promote it (all of 2 days, though in that time, when word got around we were to have guests perform alongside us, Paul was inundated with requests from musicians on the coast…) but the crowd was receptive and the atmosphere was great. We started late after coming up short cable-wise, and kicked off with some intimate, groovy and smokey blues. The reason I love playing bass.

Mik and Paul

Spanish Steve McDonald (sorry, keep forgetting the chaps name) came on after we played a few songs and played some vintage swing and ragtime music with our drummer Andy providing an awesome display of percussion. They were nothing short of staggering – heartfelt, humour-filled and honest. We then finished off the night with some more upbeat songs and a rousing jam of Bright Lights, Big City with José playing guest harmonica, and Spanish Steve McDonald playing some very impressive slide.

Paul

Spanish Steve McDonald and Andy

We played the entire gig at a fraction of the volume that you’d need to play in a pub or bar and because of that it sounded gorgeous… why is it nigh-on impossible to see decent musicians in such civilised surroundings these days? Don’t get me wrong, I love a loud and rocking gig as much as the next man but sometimes it’s nice to really sit back and enjoy the music without splitting your ear drums…

The staff at Terra Sana, always accommodating, fixed us some fine food as well as keeping an endless supply of beer coming our way. For a first night it was pretty cool, and we think it’s going be getting a lot better over the coming weeks.

*As it turns out, his name is Nacho. Apologies to both Nacho and Corrie’s Steve MacDonald for the mix-up.