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The
Land Grab problem has received much comment in the UK press
and so it should.
The
situation in Javea is a little different at the moment but the
future is uncertain.
This
is what the Javea Civic Society said of the situation in June
2007
LRAU/LUV
Latest Update:- March 19th
2007
A recent
visit by Euro- MPs may raise doubts about the authority and
influence of European legislation not only here in Valencia
but also as it applies to Spain. The visiting team from the
Petitions Committee of the European Parliament had a new
chairman and this time included a member of the UK
Conservative party.
This tour
of the area on 8th and 9th of March included visits to several
other places in the Costa Blanca area which were not included
on previous occasions. While well attended these evidence
gathering tours appear to have made not the slightest
impression on Valenciano politicians or the arguably illegal
LUV legislation. Quite the opposite, press reports from
Valencia reporting on speeches by state politicians indicate
clearly that they are not welcome, not wanted and irrelevant
to Valencia.
Hereabouts
in Jávea we have been shielded from these laws by the
introduction of the PGOU, the preparatory period of up to two
years during which all development is frozen except for
certain licenses granted prior to that period. Of great
concern is the fear that many projects granted under the LRAU
will be implemented under those suspended laws once the PGOU
has been approved. It has been stated that projects granted
licenses under the old LRAU (Ley Reguladora de Actividades
Urbanisticsas) and the previous LUV (Ley Urbanistica de
Valencia) legislation will be exempt from later regulatory
legislation. Even the new proposals put forward to amend this
law fall, according to statements made by the Petitions
Committee members, far short of minimum European legislative
requirements.
There is
still no sign that the legal challenges through European Human
Rights legislation, to which Spain is a full participant, have
yet reached judicial review and the language now being used by
the euro politicians does not appear to mention or convey
legal redress or financial restitution to the victims. We are
informed that a statement is due sometime later in March.
La
Ley Regulardora de la Actividad Urbanistica –
Nobody LUVs it.
The LRAU,
law 6/94 of the Valencia Autonomous Community, was introduced
with bipartisan support (PP and PSOE and their assorted
affiliates) in an attempt to put an end to supposed land
speculation which, it was claimed at the time, was preventing
young people from finding affordable housing. The intent might
have been to underpin this verbose and complex Law with a
series of administrative procedures and instructions providing
clarification regarding the application of the Law and
resolving some internal contradictions, but those never
emerged.
Whilst the
basic purpose of the law was arguably honourable, the way in
what that end would be met was problematical. And the basic
tenet of the Law was that building for the sake of building
was self-evidently A Good Thing.
(But first
a digression. Land law in Spain is not a matter for the
central government, but rather responsibility lies at
Autonomous Community level: and Madrid is unable directly to
intervene politically to challenge Autonomous Community
legislation, or the application of that legislation (although
a case might eventually be filed by the victims of those laws
with the Constitutional Court). The powers held at AC level
are much greater than those held by, for example, the
parliaments of Scotland or of Wales.)
In the
Valencia AC, devolution of town planning law was taken a stage
further and devolved to town hall (municipality) level and
then town halls could themselves devolve responsibility to an
agente urbanisador, a builder or property developer. This
might have been a way of handling the criticism made in a 1988
report by a delegation from European Parliament that most town
halls lacked the technical ability properly to supervise and
control most aspects of development and construction – but
the result has been to give the construction industry in the
VAC a license to print money, and to allow them to do so using
somebody else’s paper and ink.
For the
Law allows an agente urbanisador to agree a building plan (a
plan parcial – a re-drawing of the boundaries between plots
or ‘parcelas’) with a town hall covering a designated
area, and then go on to demand that those who own property or
land there surrender land to allow the ‘development’ – a
swathe of terraced houses (chalets adosados), perhaps, or a
golfing and hotel resort – to take place. The agente
urbanisador did not even have to own a single square metre of
land within the agreed area of his plan.
The Law
then piled insult on top of that injury and allowed the
builder to demand that those existing owners contribute to all
aspects of his costs, from the planning of the project through
to the infrastructure needed to make it viable. Elsewhere in
Europe, governments, after lengthy public consultations, can
acquire land and property to enable major infrastructure
projects such as dams, or motorways or railways, but to do so
they have to pay full and fair compensation at pre-blight
valuation. In the VAC, and under the LRAU, the planning
process was far from transparent, no compensation was paid and
existing owners were handed unsubstantiated and unaudited
bills for their supposed ‘share’ of development costs.
Owners were given just 15 days to respond, with drawings and a
financial counter proposal, to a plan which might have been
years in the hatching.
All of
this was justified by spokespeople from the Generalitat and
from the construction industry who claimed that existing
owners should welcome the development of their, usually, rural
areas and the improved infrastructure that would be put in
place. Indeed, in the longer term – or so it was claimed –
they would see the value of their properties increase because
of this. Those spokespeople ignored the fact that many chose
to move to rural areas for the tranquillity and special
quality of life offered, and that few, if any, of those owners
had bought property as a speculative investment: they had
simply chosen to buy in to a rural lifestyle. One is tempted
to wonder why, if the purely economic arguments are so
persuasive, the developers did not simply make owners offers
they just could not refuse… And the cynics point out that
few, if any, of the plans from agentes urbanizadores actually
include social housing, the provision of which was the reason
for Law 6/94.
In
November 2003 a public meeting was convened in Javea which
clearly demonstrated the depth of the anguish caused by the
perverse application of the LRAU. The organisers expected 70
to 100 people to turn up. Between 5 and 6 HUNDRED did,
overflowing from the main meeting room of the Parador in to
the gardens whilst many others, unable to find parking, simply
turned round and went home. This meeting catalysed the
formation and growth of an action group whose efforts and
organisation in the past 3 and a half years have been a model
of how to use the Internet and an ever-expanding network of
contacts to raise awareness of the impact of the LRAU and the
property market uncertainty and instability which it caused.
(See www.abusos-no.org - Link at bottom of this page - The
Powerpoint presentation there is especially good.)
The
Valencia Autonomous Community’s own Ombudsman, the Sindíc
de Greuges, subsequently publish a damning report on the LRAU
highlighting 13 major areas where the rights of, especially,
small property owners were not being protected.
The
Generalitat creaked in to action and over a period in excess
of a year claimed that a new land law, to be called la Ley
Urbanistica Valenciana (LUV), was being drafted. This was
introduced in early 2006, prompting a number of late night,
smoke-filled room, meetings in town halls to push through new
plans under the predecessor law, the LRAU. They need not have
rushed, for the promised improved protection and fairer
treatment for small property owners simply did not
materialise. There were token improvements, including a small
extension of the time granted for those wishing to appeal
against the loss of their land, but nothing of substance. The
Sindíc again issued a highly critical report: and again the
underlying philosophy of the law is that construction for the
sake of construction is A Good Thing..
What does
the future hold? Construction has become the motor of the
Spanish economy, especially in the VAC, replacing agriculture,
shoe and toy making as major employers. Northern Europeans,
mainly but not exclusively British people, flock in to buy
their dream homes in the sun. The process is clearly
unsustainable in the long term: there is not enough land, and
above all not enough water. And Spain should be deeply worried
that those seeking to develop ‘residential tourism’ in the
Balkans – and even further afield – swear that they will
do everything possible to avoid repeating Spain’s mistakes.
The few glimmers of hope come through
a recognition in Madrid (and elsewhere) that immense
environmental damage is being done by all this building work
– see, for example, the recent Greenpeace report (click on
the box below for details)
Greenpeace report
www.greenpeace.org
That gives Madrid a tiny window
of opportunity to intervene, as the environment is an area of
central government competence, not the responsibility of the
autonomous regions
from the European parliament,
whose Petitions Committee have visited the region and who have
identified probable breaches in the Community’s rules on
government procurement in the way in which agents
urbanisadores are ‘selected from the readiness by a major
London (and international) law firm to mount legal action
(similar to a class action law suite in the US) on a no win,
no fee basis
But, as
always, prevention is better than cure. Rural properties are
especially vulnerable to the predation of the LRAU (and now
the LUV), but even existing urbanisations can be at risk, if a
developer-friendly town hall decides that they are just phase
1 of a continuous process of development. Buyer beware. Get a
good lawyer before you even look at property, and take your
time to learn about the mirage of land tenure in the VAC.
And on top
of the legal nightmares created by the LRAU and the LUV, there
is the problem, in many parts of the Valencia Autonomous
Community (and elsewhere in Spain), of illegal building.
Property built without planning permission and sold to
unsuspecting foreigners who believe the estate agents and
promoters who tell them, as part of a pressure sell, that
‘they call do it all for you’ and so you don’t need the
expense of an independent lawyer. That alone should cause
warning bells to ring.
Juan de la
Luz.
As recommended by
the Javea Civic Society and endorsed by ourselves the best
authority of what has happened and what is currently happening
we suggest you log on to
Abusos
Urbanisticos - NO
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