In this news:
Alan James, award-winning business man, he who defined the Costa del Sol, has had a street name dedicated to him by Estepona council.
Attending the event on Tuesday, April 29 was José Mª García Urbano, the mayor of Estepona, to officially unveil the new street sign along with a plenty of family, friends, colleagues and business partners.
Now, named after the couple Alan and Carol James, a couple who landed in the Costa del Sol 55 years ago, during the days of Franco, no one could have ever imagined what Alan was going to do for the south coast of Spain.
Self-taught in skills of accounting and management, after 15 years of working in the concrete business, he heard a rumour that northern Europeans were becoming increasingly interested in buying second homes on the Spanish coast. While Spaniards tend to prefer to live close together, Alan knew that Northern European tastes were more for space and airiness, and so a new kind of Spanish coastal living was born.
Together with business partners who shared Alan’s vision, the Experience Group was formed. From construction, to electronics, from cruise ships to establishing the Costa del Sol’s first lawn bowls clubs, without Alan’s business prowess, the Costa del Sol would never have looked as it does today.
87 years old and Alan still turns up at the office every morning. ‘On the ground floor of the offices we have construction, management, rental and sales. Upstairs there’s the electronics and telecommunications division, four different companies doing everything from solar to air-con and fibre optics and everything you can think of with electronics. I’ve handed the reins over to my daughters, but I’m still here. My desk is the same,’ Alan tells us.
The unveiling event was kept a complete surprise from Alan as the crowd lined up to applaud the man who was one of the main figures defining what the Costa del Sol would be, because Alan James is the Costa del Sol.
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