The provincial law court has just confirmed the ex-Mayor’s acquittal by the local court in Motril, together with the other five councillors that stood trial with him over the illegally-built sports hall in the Rio Jate vega.

The provincial court of appeal considered that when the ex-Mayor and other members of the municipal council stated that they didn’t know that the ground on which they had given the go ahead for the facilities was ‘not appropriate,’ it cannot be proved that they were lying. It pointed out that certain members of the Council did not occupy posts where they would have known such details, however one can be forgiven for thinking that the councillor in charge of urban development and the Mayor should have known this.

Furthermore, the judge at the court of appeal said that it cannot be proved that somebody was lying, unless there was a witness that would confirm that the accused had stated that they had known that it was illegal to build there.

It all started in 2004 when the Town Council signed an accord with a local land owner who ceded land for public use to be used for a sports facility. In that same plenary meeting it was agreed to draw up an agreement between the township and the Junta to build a sports hall ‘within the municipality;’ i.e., without mentioning a specific location.

Finally, an agreement was signed and the location stipulated, yet almost two years later, in 2006 the Junta denounced the Town Hall for approving the project. According to the Town Hall nobody said ‘boo’ in the Junta from 2003 when a modification to the PGOU was made, until 2007 when the Junta lodged the lawsuit.

The appeals court judge underlined the fact that the land on which the sports facility was built in 2005 was categorized as ‘sectorized building land’ and was not classified as ‘protected cultivation land’ as the Junta claimed.

So, the question that we ask ourselves, contemplating the above details, is: was the land suitable in a legal sense or not, and if it was not, being unable to prove that somebody was lying or not is hardly grounds for acquittal, surely?

The fact is that these councillors are paid bloody good money to do a job properly, so it is no defence if somebody working in the urban development department ‘didn’t know’ if they could build there or not, because you can bet your bottom dollar that if it were a private owner that had built where he should not, the Town Hall would not accept, “Sorry, I didn’t know.”

(News: Herradura/Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)