Back in March 2006, Ecologists in Acción, launched a complaint against the 51-house development, Urbanisación, Los Pinos, asking what such a residential estate was doing in a supposed green belt area. The Mayor’s rapid response pointed out that the planning permission was approved on the 14th January 2002, when the previous administration under the PP-PSOE coalition council.
According to the Mayor, the Ecologists made no objection whilst the housing was going up, and that his party had opposed the project. He also said that the Ecologist might like to investigate the fact that there is a 166sq/mt property on the estate that belongs to the brother of somebody who signed the building permission. What the Mayor did not mention was that his administration signed the first occupation certificate…
Fast forward four years and we have this present situation and the Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Andalucía’s recent findings, in which they uphold the Junta’s case against the Town Hall and the development company, Playa Costa Tropical S.L., in which the Junta demands that the original building licence be revoked, because the urbanisation is sitting on green-belt land.
Regressing in time again to 2001, during a plenary meeting of the full council when the project was approved, several members of the public had lodged objections to the building project but their complaints were squashed during the said plenary-council meeting because the project ‘was fully in line with legality.’
Approval, then, was given for the go-ahead by the PSOE-PP-PILH governing coalition in 2002. Benavide’s party (let’s call a spade a spade because although the name of his party changes, there’s no doubt who calls the shots) was in opposition and voted against the project.
The then Mayors, (PSOE and PP alternated in the mayor’s seat) claim that they had no alternative but to approve the project because the Town Hall Surveyor had submitted favourable reports – i.e., they had no justification for rejecting it. But, as mentioned above, Benavide’s party voted against – which is quite interesting, and raises the question, what justification did he use? Bear in mind that the Municipal Surveyor is popularly conceived as a Benavides man.
The IU, who have never government because they are a minority party, probably asked the most pointed questions and made the most damning conclusions. They fact is, IU leader, Fermín Tejero, says is that it doesn’t matter who was governing the Town Hall at the time, the Town Hall, as an entity, is responsible and inter-party bickering is irrelevant. More to the point, if the 51 dwellings are demolished, all of which were bought in good faith, the Almuñécar taxpayer will end up footing the bill for the compensation that will inevitably have to be paid out, in such an end scenario.
The PP claim that the Junta has moved the goal posts because it has been common practice, where privately owned, green-belt land is concerned, that as long as the total surface area is respected, a green-belt plot can been developed as long as the total area is swapped for building land elsewhere; i.e., the green-belt plot becomes developable and the hitherto building land is converted into green belt land. The PSOE-governed Junta, according to the PP, has never objected to this up until now.
The Mayor heroically states that the Town Hall will stand by the property owners; victims of the PSOE-PP-PIHL coalition’s perfidious workings, forgetting, it seems, that behind this long list of ‘homes in danger of demolition,’ it is always the Town Hall that is responsible, regardless of who is in power at the time – the very people that should be safeguarding us.