Almuñécar can breath easier thanks to a court decision, throwing out a Junta law suit demanding 1.3m euros from the town.

The amazing thing is that the money relates to a plot of land that the Town Hall ceded in 1995 – without charge – to the Junta so that the Regional Government could build 25 VPO’s (subsidized housing units). The housing was never built, by the way.

The council houses, as the British would call them, were to go in the P-4, next to the Rio Verde, not far from the medical centre. Then in 2004 the then Mayor, Sr. Benavides, signed a deal with the Junta, swapping the plot for a different one so that the original plot could be used to build a law-court complex (palacio de justicia). That was never built either…

The EPSA (regional housing department) had agreed to the swap on the condition that a similar plot of land on the P-4 be provided for the housing. There was a 5-year time limit to this, but in the meantime, Lehman Brothers crashed over in the States and the rest is history.

A decade later the Junta wants cash instead of the original, empty building plot, hence the 1.3m claim. Yup, that’s right: the land they got for free.

The fact is that between 1995 and 2004 no housing was built despite this period coinciding with the building boom. But then Benny came along in 2004, after winning the 2003 elections, and signed a deal which has subsequently caused all the trouble. Had things been left as they were, Almuñécar would have had every right to reclaim the original plot, owing to the Junta falling through with its end of the deal.

Anyway, you can read the original article on the subject from June 2014 by click on this link.

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