Merchants complain that two patrols are insufficient to control two dozen irregular vendors every Sunday.
“There are between two and three dozen, they move quickly and the Police cannot chase them away,” Javier Moreno explained yesterday while ordering the footwear that he puts up for sale on Sundays at the Cabo de Palos market. Like him, another 210 merchants who pay for the space they occupy each week, next to the Las Dunas center, have seen the reappearance this year of canvases full of items of dubious origin and sub-Saharan sellers who offer them at low prices. Added to this irregular competition are the problems they have in locating their stalls early in the morning, since when they arrive there are dozens of parked cars, with young people drinking.
THE DATA
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210
Merchants set up their stalls every Sunday, on average, at the Cabo de Palos market. Yesterday there were two dozen vendors there. Vendor associations indicate that there have been up to two and three times as many.
Every Sunday morning this summer starts with a lot of trouble for street vendors. “This morning there were rows of cars parked throughout the open space where the market is installed,” explained the representative of the merchants, Pedro Furió.
“At five in the morning, when we started to arrive, there is no Local Police that is in charge of ensuring that the cars are removed,” said Furió. “Vendors found groups of people with car stereos blaring and even some of them lying around drunk or half asleep,” he added.
Calls to the crane
«The problem is that no one from the City Council signals the area with posts prohibiting parking, as is usually done in the urban area of Cartagena. They just put a disk in one of the entrances, but it’s not enough. They should do it by system, because every Sunday the market is installed. That forces my colleagues to call the tow truck, as happened this morning. Luckily, this time he showed up diligently and retired some cars. Not like other times in recent weekends. In addition, a patrol of the Local Police has been swollen to issue fines, “said Javier Moreno. However, both he and Furió missed the fact that there is preventive work that prevents vehicles from parking there. “It is unpleasant to arrive and meet young people with one or two drinks too many, with whom it is not always easy to talk so that they remove their vehicles,” said Furió.
As the morning progressed, other difficulties arose yesterday. At eleven o’clock, young sub-Saharans began to proliferate with their expandable bags in the form of a canvas in which to display sunglasses, team shirts and elite athletes, and sneakers with the anagram of well-known brands, whose origin and quality are often in question.
This happened near the entrance to the market along the path that leads from the Civil Guard barracks. In the middle of the access street, marked so that it was half a dozen meters wide, there were seven blankets arranged on the ground with all kinds of products piled up. At the next bend to the left were three more. «On the one hand, it pisses you off to know that these people do not pay for the space and that you not only have an annual canon but also a tax for being self-employed. On the other hand, it makes you sad to think that they are people who have nothing. It is not our job to denounce them, it is the task of the Local Police to be here to prevent their sales,” commented a merchant who preferred not to be identified.
According to the association of street vendors of which Pedro Furió is vice president, there are more than 80 people on file who carry out this task of selling irregularly in markets and in other locations such as Puerto Bello. «In some places they even install exhibitors and racks with the merchandise. Up to that point comes the impunity with which they operate », he indicated.
Street vending is monitored by the Local Police Market Unit. “We know that there have been problems with the lack of troops. This summer, of course, we see less police presence than other years, “said Javier Moreno.
Pedro Furió insisted on the need to reinforce the market units because “this summer we have also noticed an evolution”. «The manteros who deal with sales do not go alone. There are usually two or three big guys who can get aggressive if one of the flea market vendors catches their eye,” he explained. Just yesterday, according to Javier Moreno, a beverage vendor who moves around the market with his cart had a scuffle that almost ended in a fight with one of them.
In addition, when they see the arrival of the Police from afar, “they run away and they don’t care about taking men, women and children ahead. We have also had some unpleasant episodes of this type this year, “added Furió.
request for reinforcements
The municipal government team reached an agreement last Friday with the City Council unions. It includes the unlocking of 20,000 extra hours for special services of the Local Police. The objective of programming them, with a cost of about 600,000 euros, should serve, among other things, to reinforce surveillance in the markets, especially in Cabo de Palos. Yesterday, the merchants counted two patrols, that is, four agents who “played cat and mouse with the vendors, but they put them on the run,” explained several merchants from Cabo de Palos.
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