Costa del Sol residents protest over library closures

Residents of the villages of Benajarafe and Chilches on the eastern Costa del Sol protested at the doors of the Benajarafe civic centre against the closure of the villages’ library service on Monday 18 November. “We want to read, reading is culture, fewer planes and more libraries,” were some of the slogans chanted by protesters.

“It has always been a problem in the libraries of Vélez-Málaga, except for the two big ones in Vélez-Málaga and Torre del Mar, and the one in Caleta de Vélez, which also has permanent staff and can open daily,” explained Olga Rodríguez, member of the Benajarafe and Chilches villages association, who explained that in the rest of the centres “there are not enough staff to open daily”.

According to the residents, when the library does open it is only three afternoons a week in Benajarafe and in Chilches two, from five to eight in the evening. “As soon as there are holidays or sick leave there is no staff to guarantee the opening of all the libraries and some or all of them are closed if necessary so that the two main libraries remain open,” Rodríguez said.

According to the residents the library in Chilches has been closed since August, and the Benajarafe library closed in September, when the contracts of the temporary caretaker staff came to an end. They complained that the temporary staff who had been employed were not “qualified” to arrange loans, so that residents could only read in the library itself.

According to Rodríguez a group of residents met with the councillor responsible for the area recently who “assured us that they were waiting for new contracts which would allow them to open for longer opening hours, and also that they were going to ask for subsidies to renovate the facilities and install air conditioning”. However, she claims that they have since learned that the “subsidies were denied in October, precisely because the Benajarafe library was not open enough hours per week to qualify for them”.

The residents are calling for more money to be allocated to the libraries “so that they are open every day, at a time that allows them to be used not only for reading, but also as a space for study or cultural activities”. They have also asked for the furniture to be updated and air conditioning to be installed.

Vélez-Málaga town hall told SUR that it “have been working for some time to solve this situation of lack of library assistants”. There are seven vacancies, “waiting to be filled”. Town hall sources added that meetings have been held with residents who were told that the positions will be filled “at any moment”. The municipal sources have acknowledged that with caretakers covering the roles temporarily “it is not possible to offer the book lending service” and that they were only able to “open and close” the libraries “for studies”.