The Motril Town Hall is asking for a pardon for the 3,000 illegal dwellings within its municipality, 300 of which have been ‘found’ in the last year.

Now, one of the reasons that the Town Hall would like to legalise these dwellings is that they’re not paying municipal rates (IBI). All these little ‘cortijos’ are not using mains water, do not use the municipal sewage system and do not have rubbish collections, so quite apart from the inconvenience for the home owners, they get a juicy potential income for the municipal coffers.

Anyway, this pardon, if granted by the Junta, will not cover those dwellings that have been built in ‘highly illegal’ areas, which only accounts for about ten percent of them.

This is all part of a new law that the Junta is preparing and should be up and running within six months. The Board for Public Works and Housing, headed by Josefina Cruz was in the Axarquia area meeting local-area mayors and the plan is to pardon 11,000 illegal dwellings.

The first step is for the Town Hall here to make a list of all illegal dwellings, with their owners supplying all the relevant data. The very positive point for illegal cortijo owners is that the land on which it sits no longer has to be under cultivation.

Finally, in the meantime and irrespective of the above, three rural areas of the municipality, La Zorreras, Las Algaidas and La Cartujilla are in luck, as they are already included in the PGOU as Hábitat Rurales Diseminados (Scattered Rural Habitat), so legalisation can already begin.

Mind you, I’m not a lawyer or an expert on the subject, so please do not take this as Gospel, as I am only repeating what is in the provincial press.

(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)