RESIDENTS OF El Altet, the small municipality that until very recently bore the official name of the nearby Alicante-Elche Airport, have declared their intentions to go independent.
Currently they come under the jurisdiction of the city of Elche which is some miles away.
A public petition will be presented on Thursday with the aim of making El Altet a completely independent area.
There has been a claim for some time that El Altet should have such a status and goes back to 1881 when a request was made for the first time to be segregated from Alicante. Similar petitions were made in 1889, 1936 and 1937.
In more recent times, in 1992, residents from El Altet made representations to Elche to secure independent status but despite getting enormous popular support from the people as a whole, the case was taken to the Supreme Court in 2002 which finally ruled in favour of Elche.
Now they’re trying again, especially against a background of issues in nearby Arenales del Sol surrounding the old hotel, lack of essential services especially in education, the renaming of the El Altet airport and the general non-compliance in promised electoral programmes from Elche.
A spokesman for the group behind this latest push said: “It is not only a necessity for the well-being of its inhabitants, it is also an historical desire of the Altetanos to self-manage and write their own destiny.”
