Perhaps many foreign residents have not heard of Ruiz Mateos (Rumasa) but this Spanish eccentric entrepreneur is very familiar in Spanish households. Back in the 80’s the Rumasa business empire, run by the Ruiz Mateos family, collapsed – it was huge, and then recently, Nueva Rumasa was launched and looked to be turn into the giant of its former self, yet it was not to be, because it has collapsed again amongst allegations of fraud.
Most locals know that Nueva Rumasa was the owner of the Dhul factory in Granada, which went bust, but what most did not know was that Nueva Rumasa also owns a large area of farm land behind La Herradura worth 59m euros – hardly peanuts.
Consequently, when the investigating judge, Pablo Ruiz, ordered all the property belonging to the Ruiz Mateos family to be embargoed – a total of 220 properties (industrial warehouses, chalets and farms) this La Herradura property was amongst them.
The 63-hectare farm in question, figured under the name Panix Española, which was created 20 years ago and has been run by persons linked with Rumasa, although not since 2010, according to Municipal Land Register. The property, which had been earmarked as part of a golf-course project, is registered as ‘rustic’ although there is a convenio to include it in the pending PGOU. The said convenio includes luxury housing and a hotel.
The land in question, known locally as La Argentina, lies between the N-340 and the A-7, more or less behind the controversial sports hall, according to an article in the Ideal newspaper. Some say that it even extends even beyond the A-7.
It was in 2000 that the Town Hall approved a ‘modifacion puntual’ to the existing PGOU for the construction of a geriatric hospital, but this was stopped in its tracks when the Junta de Andalucía took the Town Hall to court over its proliferation of modicaciones puntuales. In 2003 there was the first attempt to build a golf course on 2m-sq/m of land next to the Rio Jate. The Town Hall had approved a convenio with the multiple landowners for the project to be included in the pending PGOU.
But, of course, there is still no PGOU and La Argentina continues to be registered as simple propiedad rústica.
We have used several Spanish terms here, which are commonly used but may not be known by some readers: convenio – accord, used here in its urban development tense; PGOU – General Urban Development Plan which sets the limits to municipal expansion; modificacion puntual – a ‘supposedly’ minor amendment to an existing PGOU, which in the case of Almuñécar have been habitually abused to make sweeping and illegal changes to the PGOU; rústica – land category meaning arable land; i.e., not for development.
(News: Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)