Robert Firth
ANGRY parents have slammed a ban on unaccompanied children from using a Malaga library as ‘absurd.’
Children under 14 have have been banned from the Alberto Jimenez Fraud library in the city’s Palma-Palmilla district, unless they are supervised by an adult, since May.
However, parents in one of Malaga’s poorest districts, have attacked the measure, saying that is punishing children who want to better themselves.
“There are many children who are in the street and the library picks them up and offers them an alternative,” said Maria del Mar Garcia, whose children regularly use the library.
The mother of three, who works nights, said her daughter often used to visit the library in the morning while she slept.
” I don’t have time to be there with her for two and a half hours,” she said.
“We live right next door and she was used to being here alone: it was her routine.”
Other parents have said that children used to come to the library to use the computers and internet, which not all had access to in their homes.
A spokesperson representing municipal libraries in Malaga said that they were ‘studying alternatives’ for the library and said that the restrictions on children in libraries hadn’t posed a ‘problem in other places.’
