The Almaria Herald

“The truth, carefully.”

Business

Northern tariffs threaten Cordoba assembly line; Commerce Hall convenes

A twenty-five per cent duty from the north would fall first on the Cordoba quarter, and the Commerce Hall spent three hours on Thursday saying so.

By By V. Aldama · Business·2 min read

Continued — see The Thread: northern-tariff →

The Almaria Chamber of Commerce sat in emergency session Thursday in Almaria Vella, summoned by word that a major northern trading bloc intends to impose duties of up to twenty-five per cent on Mediterranean motor vehicles as early as next week. The assembly plant in the Cordoba industrial quarter, which employs some nine hundred hands in finishing and export crating, stands directly in the path of the measure.

Senhora Dolors Puigcerdà, economic adviser to Cardenal Marín and a familiar figure on the steps of the Commerce Hall, spoke for the delegation that emerged after three hours of closed discussion. "We are monitoring the situation with grave concern," she told reporters. "Almaria cannot absorb such a blow without consequences for our workers." The phrasing was careful; the faces behind her were not.

The Herald understands that the Foreign Ministry has dispatched a diplomatic note requesting urgent clarification from the bloc's trade attaché. Officials in the Palau de la Generalitat would not confirm the text of the note, but two persons familiar with its drafting describe it as firm in tone and narrow in scope — a request for time, not a protest.

The Cordoba quarter has a longer memory than the ministries that govern it. The assembly works were rebuilt in the 1960s on the site of the old Cordoba foundry, and the payrolls have passed through three generations of the same families in Sant Joan and the Bloc del Puerto. A twenty-five per cent duty, traders on the Exchange floor estimated on Thursday afternoon, would erase the plant's margin on its principal export contract within a single quarter.

The matter now travels three corridors at once: the Commerce Hall, which will reconvene Monday; the Foreign Ministry, which awaits a reply; and the Chamber, where the fuel reserve already occupies the Government's Monday sitting. Prime Minister Blanch, attending a civic ceremony in Cordoba, did not address the tariff question directly.

The House of Cordoba, whose industrial holdings include the assembly works' principal landlord, issued no statement. A person close to the estate described the patriarch as "attentive" to the Commerce Hall's proceedings and disinclined to speak before Monday. That, too, is a position.

(continued on p. 1)

Politics · Crown

Chamber to sit Monday on sealed reserve; Opposition presses its case

The instrument goes to a vote on Monday along the Cordoba line; three coastal independents remain undecided.

By By Marisol Vega · Crown·p. 1

Society

Four thousand march for labour reform; Blanch promises summer debate

The largest May Day turnout in a decade filled the Plaça; the Prime Minister promised a labour debate before the recess.

By By the Herald Staff · Society·p. 2

World

Foreign Ministry presses for medical parole of detained advocate

Montserrat's statement stops short of sanctions but hints at support for a censure motion at the regional council.

By By the Herald Staff · World·p. 3

Opinion

A week of three corridors

By V. Aldama

The Chamber that returns on Monday will find three matters on its ledger and no obvious order of precedence among them. The fuel reserve is the first, by calendar and by coalition arithmetic. The registry breach is the second, by the Opposition's insistence. The northern tariff, announced on Thursday in the manner that such things are now announced — through briefings, leaks, and the measured alarm of a Chamber of Commerce delegation — is the third.

Continued →

Gossip from the Vella

¶A certain northern attaché was observed dining at the Athenaeum on Wednesday, in company that included neither of the two ministers one might have expected. The bill, we are told, was settled in cash.

¶The corridor whisper at the Commerce Hall gives the Cordoba assembly works six months before a second shift must be reconsidered. The estate's silence on the question has been noted, and not only by us.

¶Senhora Puigcerdà's arrival on the steps of the Commerce Hall on Thursday was, we are assured, entirely her own initiative. The Cardenal's office was informed afterward.

Classifieds

· WANTED — experienced bookkeeper, half-days, for small import house near the Harbour Gate. References from a Vella firm preferred. Apply Box 412.

· FOR SALE — complete set of the Almarian Encyclopaedia (1962 edition, twelve volumes, leather bound). Excellent condition. Enquiries to the Athenaeum porter.

· ROOMS TO LET — two furnished rooms above the chandler's in Sant Joan, with partial sea view. Suitable for single professional gentleman. No musicians.

Obituaries

Senhora Amàlia Ferrer i Roig

Seamstress of the old Vella tailoring quarter for fifty-one years, who dressed three generations of Chamber members and was known for finishing a waistcoat inside a single afternoon. Aged 84. Funeral Saturday at Santa Maria del Mar.

Don Joaquim Vidal-Esteve

Retired harbour pilot, forty years on the Almaria bar, whose knowledge of the channel in fog was relied upon by every captain who entered the port between 1958 and 1998. Aged 91. Family request no flowers.

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