Has hope been dashed for the 51 homeowners in Los Pinos in Almuñécar after the supreme court of the land upheld the regional supreme court’s decision?
In 2010 the Tribunal Supremo de Justicia de Andalucía upheld the provincial law court’s findings that the building licence granted to Playa Tropical S.L. was illegal and that, in effect, the 51 houses belonging to the urbanización, did not legally exist, even though by then they were inhabited.
The licence had been granted in 2002 by the coalition PSOE/PP/PIHL, which had been formed by odd bed fellows to deny Juan Carlos Benavides the mayoralty, even though his party had won the elections. In other words, the same as the present arrangement in Almuñécar a decade later.
The only difference then was that the two major parties involved (the socialists and the conservatives) had agreed to split the legislature, with each party supplying a mayor; the PSOE one for first 2.5 years and the PP one for second 1.5 years.
What had gone wrong with the Los Pinos development , which is just off the Los Pinos roundabout on the N-340, was that the obligatory green zones had not been respected and an area of pines had been gobbled up. Coupled to this, the building ratio (edificabilidad); i.e. the density of building permitted on the plot had been surpassed.
The tweaking of urban development restrictions beyond the point of legality has been rife in Almuñécar regardless of who is in office over the last three decades, which is why there have been so many law suits, most of which against Juan Carlos Benavides. Bear in mind, however, that the short-lived coalition government at the beginning of the century managed to get a few under their belt, as well.
However, all is not lost because the top law court did accept part of the appeal meaning that a new judge will have to be appointed to see if the 51 houses that broke the law of the time can adjust to the present laws, as they were built quite some time ago and laws have changed.
Another point is that there is a one court in the land that can revoke the Supreme Court’s decisions, and that is the Constitutional Court, which only exists to judge whether a person’s constitutional rights have been infringed. Some of the affected homeowners, who did not go through the Supreme Court, can launch an appeal before this court, claiming that their rights have been infringed. Let’s see if they go for it.
Finally, the PP, who governed then and now, say that the awarded the building licence to the company because municipal inspectors (read civil servants and not PP politicians) had said supplied favourable reports, thus the councillors that voted in favour of granting the licence at the Plenary Meeting of the day, were only acting on this information.
(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)