We received a press release concerning the Cotobro Conservation Entity (ECCO) which has decided to auto-dissolve.
On September the 29th , 2022, the Extraordinary General Assembly of the Entidad de Conservación de Cotobro (ECCO) the residents of Cotobro unanimously agreed to dissolve the Entidad with effect from February the 28th, 2023.
The reason was the final ruling of the 2nd instance of the Contentious-Administrative Court of Granada of December the 23rd, 2021, which obliges the Almuñécar Town Hall to take charge of the maintenance and development of the infrastructures of the urbanization with immediate effects and to dissolve ECCO.
The court thus filled a gap in the 1979 law on the creation of the Entidades Urbanísticas, which lacked a regulation for the termination of the institutions designed to cope with the emergency situation of the municipalities at the end of the first Spanish real-estate boom, when many unfinished urbanizations had overwhelmed their administrative capacity.
The law made it possible for the owners of the affected urbanizations to maintain their infrastructure through self-help. Thus, during the 37 years since the foundation of ECCO, the residents of Cotobro have financed – with a total of more than 2-million euros – the development of their infrastructure, including the total renewal of the electricity, telephone and water networks, and the construction of sidewalks on the main roads – without any state contributions.
ECCO statutes are based on the cited law of 1979. With the recent court sentence, the right to exist of our Entidad de Conservación has expired. Regrettably, to date, Almuñécar Town Hall has not responded to repeated formal requests by the ECCO Governing Council to negotiate an orderly handover of the infrastructure, particularly the water network to Aguas y Servicios.
For this reason, at the proposal of the Governing Council, the residents of Cotobro decided to dissolve the Urban Entity at the end of this fiscal year.
The Assembly also unanimously appointed the firm of Asinex, and its managing director, Andrea Royen, who had been in charge of the administration of ECCO since its foundation, as official liquidator as of March 1st, 2023. Their task consists of processing the dissolution of the Entidad and custody of the ECCO files for the statutory period of 10 years. During the liquidation phase, Almuñécar Town Hall will continue to act as the legal control authority.
Almuñécar, on October 5th, 2022
(News/Press Release: Almuñécar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)