Getting lockdown-hit traders and bar and restaurant owners back on road to recovery on Spain’s Costa Almeria

HUERCAL-OVERA Council has designed a packet of measures aimed at giving a helping hand to local traders and bar and restaurant owners hard hit by the coronavirus crisis lockdown.
As well as financial and fiscal measures already announced, the local authority is planning steps like action on adapting spaces for dealing directly with the public and training on modernising business models.
The council said this second block of measures under the ‘Recovery Plan’ had been based on virtual meetings with the municipal ACEH Association of Traders and Business People to set out the form of the agreements which will be signed, as well as the design of a campaign to promote local businesses.
Mayor Francisca Lourdes Fernandez maintained her administrations is “aware of our responsibility” in terms of supporting municipal traders and hospitality sector, and of the need to apply “all means within our reach so they can get back on the road to growth, which not only they need as a collective, but all of society.”
Among the measures the Huercal-Overa local council has come up with are making available €1,000 in assistance in compensation for the time businesses have had to keep their doors shut, financial help to adapt premises to health directives, and a complete guide on the good practices they will have to adopt for day-to-day operating. A further measure on the books is the possibility of extending terrace spaces for when bars, cafes and restaurants are permitted to start reopening on May 11.
In terms of training ideas, Fernandez commented, “between us all we have to make an effort to help adapt to a business model in the new context.”
She referred to the advantages to be had from introducing new technology in allowing clients to see what products and services are on offer and on facilitating purchases.
It is, according to the mayor, about “dealing with this crisis as an opportunity to modernise and to become more competitive.”
She also said there would be a campaign to make residents “aware that with our consumption habits we contribute to the growth of the municipality, which impacts on the quality of everyone’s lives.”
Among the financial and fiscal measures under the council Recovery Plan are suspending taxes for putting tables, chairs and signs in public spaces and expending payment periods for other taxes.