In April We Printed Five Pieces of Good News as a Bet. All Five Just Passed the Summer Audit.

In April we published Quietly, the Costa del Sol is Working, five pieces of good news with numbers attached, printed in a week when the friction was loud. It became our most-read issue: 908 inboxes then, a much bigger room now. It was also, though we did not frame it this way at the time, a bet. Every one of those five wins was checkable.

We have spent four weeks of this audit season checking our own work and printing the misses. So it is only fair to report what happened when we re-scored the optimism list: five for five. And the new list is longer than the old one.

The reservoirs. April said four at 100 percent and the province back to normal. The drought formally ended by decree two weeks later, and the province sits at 84.9 percent this month against 53.6 a year ago. We covered the full story last Friday; this is the scored line. Held.

The €543 million hospital. April reported the first stone of Hospital Virgen de la Esperanza in Málaga. Two live contracts are on site this summer, foundations at the Materno Infantil children's hospital and the new research building at the Hospital Civil grounds. Confirmed August 2026. The metro extension that was announced alongside it has gone quiet, so that half stays off the scoreboard until it moves. The hospital itself: held.

The Tech Park. April counted 29,018 jobs and a €615 million chip-research centre with tenders starting. The IMEC construction contracts, over €168 million of them, were awarded in June and the builders have had their kickoff on site in Campanillas. Around it, Málaga province set an employment record in July: 789,922 people affiliated to Social Security, with unemployment down 10 percent on the year. Confirmed August 2026. Held, and advanced.

The electricity advantage. April put typical bills at half of northern Europe's. The mechanism deepened: solar has inverted the tariff day, and mid-afternoon power now runs about a third of the evening price, which we showed how to use two Fridays ago. Honesty line: the regulated tariff has been climbing this month, so the advantage is real and the direction needs watching. Held, with a caveat.

The airport. April cited 25 million passengers and a €1.5 billion expansion awaiting approval. In July, Málaga airport posted the first three-million-passenger month in its history, up 6.3 percent on the year, now fourth busiest in Spain. The expansion decision has a dated window: government approval due by 30 September. Held, and then some.

The re-score is the receipt. This is the interest.

Marbella's Hospital Costa del Sol finally opened its expansion in March: more than €100 million, two new buildings, 40,000 square metres, 276 new staff posts, for a catchment of half a million people. The works had been paralysed since 2010. If your referral was routed before March, the capacity map it assumed is out of date, in your favour, and our healthcare guide covers how a derivación — referral gets reviewed.

The Madrid–Málaga high-speed line got its double track back at Álora on 17 July, roughly five months ahead of the target, after five previous targets had slipped. Renfe added eight weekly trains the same day. In our promise tracker, that is the first early delivery on record.

The regional doctors' union signed a strike-peace agreement on 29 July covering on-call continuity and emergency staffing. Three weeks earlier we had written that a September strike was the base case; the region proved us wrong in the right direction, and the remaining risk has drifted to a national action in October.

And the one that answers last Friday's worry directly: we closed the drought piece wondering whether recovery would drain the money and attention that crisis had supplied. Two weeks after the reservoirs were declared normal, Acosol tendered €14.5 million of water works for the western Costa, sewer relining and treatment upgrades, under a €60.3 million provincial water plan for 2026. Confirmed August 2026. The money arrived after the emergency left. That has not been the pattern here. It is now, at least once.

Smaller entries for the ledger: the regularisation window closed in June with 1.17 million applications, which means the informal cleaner or carer of April can now be formal; and your visitors get a reprieve, since the EU's travel-authorisation form has been postponed indefinitely. We would call that last one a win, except it is Brussels missing a deadline, which on this coast counts as local colour.

For balance, the slow column, none of it ours to mark, all of it ours to track: the Axarquía desalination plant sits at €66,000 spent against a €201 million budget, the Estepona private university has nothing authorised weeks from September, and two battery and hydrogen factories are stalled. Those are the promise-makers' slips, and we report them as they move. The pattern across four months is consistent: what is physically under construction gets finished, and what exists as an announcement mostly stays one. Read promises accordingly.

The full scored ledger, 43 public promises and counting, lives on our Promised vs Delivered tracker, updated through last week.

¿Está ya en funcionamiento? — Is it up and running yet?

Puesta en marcha — brought into service

We spent four weeks marking our own homework in red ink, and the optimism issue is the one that came back clean: five for five, with a longer list behind it. Our read, scoped to the 43 promises we track: the fix column is growing faster than the break column, physical deliveries are clustering while paper promises slip, and this is the first season we can document it rather than feel it. The next test is dated, the airport decision by 30 September, and if it slips you will read that here too. Enjoy the coast this weekend. The evidence says it is being looked after better than the noise suggests.

Enjoy the weekend — A. and the WaypointSur team, filing the red pen away until Monday, while pouring a round of cañas for the team.