The Comunidad de Regantes de Río Verde, Jete/Almuñécar won their court case, burying the proposed golf course in Almuñécar forever.

Ex-Mayor, Juan Carlos Benavides issued a Mayoral Decree on the 11th of August, 2005 giving Almuñécar Golf Río Verde S.L. y Supal 2000 S.L, permission to build a golf course in the Río Verde plantation, clearly visible from the main-road bridge.

This effectively forced the landowners (fruit farmers) into participating with their land in the project. this was one of many convenios that literally forced land owners to relinquish part or all of their land. In some cases, the land that was not gobbled up had to be sold to pay for infrastructure on the confiscated land – this occurred all over coastal Andalucia and even as far up as Valencia.

The spokesman of the governing party in 2005 declared the following at the Plenary Meeting of the Town Council that approved the golf course: “The Almuñécar agricultural sector only accounts for eight percent of the population and young people are not interested in working the land,” and forecast that only three percent would work the sector within eight years from then.

The present Councillor for the Urban Development, Fernández Medina, literally threw those words back in the face of Benavides’ party to discredit the party’s actual stance as “champions of the farming community.”

Editorial Comment: So, the vega is saved from being turned into a golf course with the accompanying array of luxury flats. Is that a good thing or not – there are bound to be opinions of all kinds, but one thing for certain is that the renewed activity in the agricultural sector owes its impetus to the crisis and the lack of jobs elsewhere. When the economy eventually does pick up, it remains to be seen whether the farming sector will lose vitality again.

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