The Supreme Court has decided in favour of the residents of Los Cármenes del Mar in La Herradura by rejecting an appeal made by the Town Hall against the previous finding of the TSJA.
What this means is that the Town Hall has to assume subsidary reponsibility for the making good the repairs to the said urbanización on Cerro Gordo. Furthermore, the Tribunal Supremo acquitted the Junta from sharing this responsibility.
One of the lawyers for the affected property owners considers that the Town Hall will now say that they don’t have the money to do it, but according to the aforementioned lawyer the Junta has already said that they would lend Almuñécar the money, which could run into millions of euros – 21 of them by some estimations.
Getting back to the Supreme Court’s finding, the judges considers that the Town Hall bears responsibility because of its “inactivity” because they issued a first-occupation certificate without it being signed off nor having verified the suitability of the completed work.
It was back in 2006 that movement on the hillside was detected and the real-estate company Comarex submitted the project to stabilise the land, but only 10% of the projected work was ever completed. Even so, the Town Hall issued the F.O.C.
Will this be just one more court finding that will be ignored? One thing is for sure the owners of the 100 dwellings that have either fallen down or been demolished because of their precarious state are bone tired of the endless judicial proceedings that have cluttered the years between the urbanisation going up at the end of the 90s and the slow-motion ‘coming down’ of today
The residents are hoping for much – they just want an access lane that leads to their homes rather than sneaking off down the hillside and the hillside to be stabilised once and for all. Of course the former is useless without the latter.
The question is, with over 200,000 euros already spent by the residents in legal costs, will the Town Hall actually do what it has been ordered to? It’s unlikely, and the residents know it.
(News: Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)
The area of Carmenes Del Mar was built during the times when Benavides was the mayor of Almuñecar. Home construction was everywhere an authentic jungle!
I know a gentleman in La Herradura, when he was a small boy used to go to the area of the Carmenes with the goats. He told me tha the ground had cracks in many places.
Somebody knew that the land was unstable, nevertheless they gave the O.K.to go ahead with the construction.
Making money was more important that the safety of the people!
I fear that it will need a deadly accident somewhere in the Urbanisation before any of the government agencies will pay attention and finally comply with all the rulings that have been made including those by the Supreme Court!
Why the Townhall cannot accept its responsibility is beyond anybody’s comprehension yet it has no qualms about collecting millions of real-estate taxes annually (for some twenty years now) from the Carmenes del Mar Owners!
Whilst we all appreciate the numerous (some costly) projects and improvements that have benefitted all of the people of La Herradura generally, for the Townhall to always pretend that there isn’t the money for repairs year after year after year is just a load of nonsense.
Somehow someone should be able to actually enforce these legal rulings but WHOM and WHEN?? How many more people need to have their homes declared unfit for habitation or see their walls crumble around them ??
Enough is enough!