Mojacar council fines Costa Almeria venue Maui €20,000 and demands two-year closure following resident complaints

MOJACAR council has demanded one of the Costa Almeria’s most popular beachside venues for partying youngsters keeps its doors shut for two years.
The local authority announced it had issued a resolution imposing not only a €20,000 fine on the company behind the Maui beach bar and disco in Mojacar Playa following numerous complaints from local people, but also stating that the establishment should not open for a period of 24 months.
A council statement said the business was responsible for a “serious violation” of the law on Public Spaces and Leisure Activities in Andalucia.
It claims that a technical report by the municipal architect in 2018 showed the establishment was staging the kind of “recreational activity” for which it “lacks the authorisation.”
It further says the report considers adopting “urgent security measures to maintain conditions of security and to not disturb the normal peace of people and residents, in view of the harm and acoustic nuisance which the use of music in the establishment causes outside the premises.”
The statement goes on to say the council has received “an infinite number of complaints from residents and communities due to the noise, the nuisance caused by being unable to sleep or rest, as well as for the rubbish which the zone wakes up to  and the arguments and shouts from some customers in the early hours of the morning.”
What’s more, the local authority asserts, a legal report dating back to October 2018 revealed that in accordance with municipal records relating to the premises and police reports, the venue was putting on activities which did not fit with its authorisations. Hence in November that year the administration launched sanctions proceedings “on having been proven” that the establishment was operating as a music bar without the right kind of licences.
What Maui does have, according to Mojacar council, is a licence dating back to 1981 to open a “caseta merendero”, which translates more or less as an open-air cafe, and which in any case was not granted to the current owners.
Posts on the Maui Twitter feed meanwhile announce the venue is due to open at the beginning of next month.
There were also Spanish press reports that the Maui management maintain there are “irregularities” in the Mojacar council resolution.