The plans to build an 18-hole golf course in Maro, together with 680 dwellings, have met serious popular opposition.
The protest group, Otro Nerja y Maro es Posible, oppose nearly two million square metres of land belonging to La Sociedad Azucarera Larios S.A. in Maro being earmarked for such a project.
The protest movement, which was founded on the 27th of January, consider that this project is a return to ‘brick rule’ and that it would have a serious environmental impact on the area.
The sugar company reached a deal with the Town Hall in April 2015 in which the PGOU would be modified to accommodate the project.
A PGOU is a municipal urban development plan that has to be approved by the Regional Government. The existing one that would need to be modified was approved by the Junta in 2002.
The Councillor for Urban Development, Anabel Iranzo (IU), said that seeing as the previous conservative-led Town Council didn’t actually get around to signing the deal with Larios, nor even presented the deal before the full council, nothing is set in stone.
“We are in negotiations with them and have asked them for changes that benefit the town. Larios wants to cooperate with the Town Hall and is not asking for compensation (money),” she stated, adding, “We do not foresee bringing it before the full Town Council.”
Editorial comment: We ran an article on this subject when the project was first announced in 2015, which contradicts the councillor’s statement that a deal was never signed.
It is also worth pointing out that when she speaks of no ‘monetary’ compensation, she is side-stepping a clause that gave company land in the centre of Nerja to the Town Hall so that it could build a new Guardia Civil post on it.
(News: Maro, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)