Almuñécar Town Hall has been hit with yet another judicial uppercut, once again over Benavides-era urban-expansion deals.

The municipal coffers will have to find two-million euros to return the money paid over to the Town Hall by the building developer, Torres for a cancelled project involving the old, municipal warehouse, which stands behind the fire station.

The sum deposited by the company was 1.4m euros but there is also 900,000 euros in interest that has to be coughed up.

Between 2003 and 2006 the Town Hall received almost 30,000,000 euros from building developers for projects that were supposed to be included in the PGOU (General Urban Development Plan) in the form of convenios urbanísticos (urban-development accords).

So far, the present municipal administration has had to pay over four million thanks to judicial findings against them concerning money paid to the Town Hall for projects that never came about through the fault of the Town Hall.

The Mayor is mightily miffed because her adminstration has spent the last eleven years paying off municipal debt accrued during (mostly) the Benavides administrations years to the tune of up to 42,000,000 euros and just when they managed to end a fiscal year with figures in the black, they get hit by these boomerang blows.

Editorial comment: the Mayor can feel as annoyed as she wants, but she won’t be finding the money from her pocket – Almuñécar tax payers will.

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