Round Town: Local News Benidorm, Alfaz, Altea.

The Ambassador was welcomed warmly to the town, by the Mayor, Agustin Navarro.

The two, along with councillor for tourism, Manuel Cabezuelo, and various consular officials from Alicante held talks in private. For around 30 minutes before issuing a joint statement to the cameras, in which Snr. Navarro expressed his delight at increasingly closer ties with the British authorities. Mr. Paxman for his part spoke of his pleasure in finally being able to visit Britain’s favourite holiday destination. We had been told that the day was being run to an incredibly tight schedule and that there was no time for questions. However Roundtown managed to be given time for just one question the only one granted to all the reporters present.

We chose to ask about a subject that prompted one of our largest postbags this year; namely the volcanic ash crisis, and whether there would be a review of how this was handled by the British consular services. We asked the question in Spanish as up to that point Mr. Paxman had happily chatted away in his fluent Spanish but on being asked the question abruptly changed to English causing some confused looks to the Spanish media there.

He stated that the consular staff had done a “terrific job” under difficult services, and our attempts to clarify whether this meant that they would not be looking at whether any recurrence of an eruption could be better managed, were answered with a smile, and the statement that “you have had your one question”.

We had a huge postbag at the time from readers, many praising the superb actions of the hoteliers and the town hall but also a fair few, pointing out dissatisfaction with the action of the consulate in Alicante.

We invite readers, who were present at the time, to send their opinions to us, and whether they consider the service they received from the consulate at the time, as “terrific”.

We will forward your comments, both good and bad!

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