Of the 2,500 illegal cortijos in the municipality of Motril, only 70 owners have decided to take advantage of the amnesty measure. Consequently, the Town Hall has extended the amnesty by a further six months.

These couple of thousand buildings have reached a sort of limbo whereby too much time has transpired for the authorities to have them demolished – the legal time limit for judicial action has expired – yet this doesn’t make them automatically legal. What it does do is leave them in a legal limbo, where they cannot apply to be connected to the water and sewer mains, nor connect up to the electricity network because they lack legality.

Furthermore, they’re difficult to sell because owners cannot obtain deeds for the structure; only the land that they are sitting on. The owner would either have to sell it to an unwitting buyer or at a very cheap price to make the property interesting, despite its illegal situation.

So, thanks to a new law brought into being by the Junta de Andalucia, the Motril Town Hall has been able to offer legalization for any property built before 2008 (i.e., over five years old) and is not built on protected land. If you’ve built your dream cortijo on a piece of land of ecological or historical value, then it doesn’t matter how old it is, it cannot be legalized

Probably the reason that so few owners have come forward is because of the process costs, on average, 2,000 euros, and many people simply don’t have that sort of money hanging around at the moment. So, as their cortijo is ‘safe’ from demolition, so to speak, then their prepared to continue in legal limbo.

Of course, the Town Hall is sorely disappointed because it was mentally rubbing its hands in glee at the prospect of two thousand people paying around a couple of thousand euros each into the municipal coffers… which is why the amnesty has been extended a further six months – and might well be extended again some might hope.

But there has been no hope for 20 property owners who have already seen their four walls bite the dust in a JCB feeding frenzy. All of them were built after 2009 and no amnesty exists for them nor will it because that same Junta law forces municipalities to put the culprits through the judicial system and demolish their illegal cortijos without further ado.

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