Santa Pola lives by the season. Of its roughly 2,360 businesses, more than 900 are in trade, transport and hospitality, and many of the bars, kiosks and shops along the beaches and the port work flat out from early summer and shut, or slow right down, through the winter.
The locks do not get the winter off. A shutter that stays down from October to Easter, a few hundred metres from the sea, collects salt in its padlock and its lock for six months. The first time anyone tries the key is often the morning of opening day.
A week before opening, try every lock
Walk round with every key and try each lock, as you will use it on the day:
- The shutter: the padlocks, the lock in the bottom rail, the cylinder in the side box if it is motorised.
- The front door and any glass door behind the shutter.
- The back door and the storeroom, which are often the most neglected and the most important.
- The terrace: gates, the box where the chairs are chained, the cupboard with the bottled gas.
- The safe for the takings, and its batteries.
A week gives you time to have anything stiff dealt with as a booked job, at a quiet hour, rather than as an emergency with deliveries waiting.
If a lock is stiff
A dry lubricant (graphite or PTFE) and a few turns of the key may free it. Do not force it: a key snapped in a shutter padlock at eight in the morning is a worse problem than a stiff one at four in the afternoon. More on why salt does this in what salt and sand do inside a lock.
Staff keys
Spring is also when seasonal staff come back, or new ones start. Before handing out keys, decide who really needs one, and keep a list. If last year’s keys were never all returned, this is the moment to change the cylinders, ideally keyed alike so the team carries one key for every door.
If the premises are in the centre
From June to mid-September the streets round the Glorieta close to traffic in the evening and all day on Sundays. Book lock work in the morning; at night the locksmith walks in from the edge: summer evenings, when the centre closes to cars. For the safe, see safe opening and fitting.