Well, actually, sympathy might not be the right word because the Spanish term that the Mayor used was sensibilizado, which literally means ‘sensitized,’ and she was referring to the state of Carmenes del Mar. This declaration came during a meeting with three representatives of the urbanizaciones affected by the land slips on Cerro Gordo.

The Mayor, Trinidad Herrera, considers that problems on Cerro Gordo to be one of the main concerns for the municipality. But whose fault is it all? Primarily the construction company, obviously; i.e., Comarex, who built Carmenes del Mar in 1999.

However, the Town Hall, which received a juicy income from granting the building licence, and the Junta de Andalucía, which gave the all-necessary official blessing for the huge urbanisación to go head, share a moral responsibility, if not a financial one, perhaps.

In fact, the only people involved that do not have any blame in the matter are precisely the ones that are suffering the consequences; the individual property owners. As the Chairman for the Urbanización Atarzanas, Ricardo López puts it, “this is a completely legal urbanización, so somebody must be to blame.”

The cause of the landslips appears to be – much like the case of the Marina del Este – underground water seepage which is literally ‘greasing’ the different layers of rock on which the housing sits.

Consequently to all this, property owners are collectively suing the construction company, Comarex. In the meantime, the Town Hall, without a penny to actively carry out any work itself to stabilize the land, has offered to be the correa de transmisión (drive belt) behind any other solution that can be found.

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