The Mayor of Almuñécar, Juan José Ruiz Joya, hasn’t given up and continues to dodge the 20m-euro payout ordered by Regional High Court over La Galera, Urban-Planning case.

The original sum that the Town Hall had to return was originally a pifling 9,866,615 euros but it kept putting it off and putting it off, fighting it in law courts, until the accumulated interest on the original debt ascended to around 20m euros.

This debt equates to roughly €714 per resident, or nearly €2,900 for a family of four in the town of 28,000 inhabitants. Of course, if the Town Hall pays over this money, it’s not theirs but rather yours; i.e., your taxes.

So what happened to the original money that was paid over by a developer in order to build a housing complex in La Galera area of Taramay, once the General Urban Planning Plan (PGOU) was adapted…(spoiler alert: it never was). The ten million was spent years ago on sports and cultural installations….Did any get ‘lost’ along the way? Perish the thought!

Fun fact: so, in the essence, the inhabitants of Almuñécar are now going to have to pay for those same municipal installations at double the price.

The deal between the developer (INONSA SL) and the Town Hall, when Big Bad Benny was the Mayor, was signed in November 2005. The icky deal included increasing building capacity by 117% (an extra 56,942 sq/m). But to do that, the Town Hall would have to get the approval of the Junta.

The company paid the first two installments totaling 9.86m euros. However, the definitive approval of the PGOU never happened. The contract, however, explicitly stated that if the plan failed, the town had to return the money with interest.

Now, bear in mind that in the building boom years, mayors across the country signed all sorts of questionable deals in full knowledge that another mayor further down the line would have to pick up the tab, as the Spanish Judicial System moves at the speed of a striking sloth and with the reaction of a dead rattlesnake.

So, what is our present-day Mayor going to do in order to slither out of this one, you ask. He has ordered the municipal legal services to find a country with no extradiction treaty…. Just joking! No, he has ordered them to study a recovery action (acción de repetición) to see if they can hold the past elected officials or technical staff who approved the deal personally and financially liable, which is only fair.

Trouble is, this affair is ticking away and just like the previous 20 years, the interest on the sum is growing.

However, rather than just depend on that, the Town Council held an Extraordinary Plenary Meeting to approve joining the 2027 Sustainability Fund (Fondo de Ordenación) and passed an Adjustment Plan to absorb the massive financial hit without rogering public services or local investments.

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

Keywords: Double or Quits, Payout, Benavides, Galera, Regional High Court, PGOU, Mayor Ruiz Joya, Interest Payments

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