Article in the Telegraph

Spanish housing scandal engulfs British property owners

Imagine. Having toiled away for a lifetime in the UK, putting meagre savings aside year after year in the hope of one day realising a dream to retire to a modest bolt hole in the sun, an opportunity presents itself.
A property developer in Almeria in Andalucia rolls out a tempting offer rather like a dodgy carpet seller in a souk. The price is right, the time is right, and after a bit of gentle haggling the deal is done. The proud owners walks away with the vital piece of paper claiming that a small ‘legal’ slice of a property development known as El Fas (perhaps best pronounced ‘farce’) in Andalucia is bagged. Just for them.
But hang on a minute. In the midst of the euphoria, the dream starts to sour. The carpet unravels. It turns out that the Dutch developer of the site-which is being built in full view of the local town hall- hasn’t got any planning permission after all. Having parted with €160,000 –in some cases, €265,000- the purchasers begin to panic. What’s going on?
One may well ask because this week Spanish authorities in Andalucia have ordered that 19 homes owned by elderly retired British expats should have their electricity and water supplies disconnected. This is the same authority that had already agreed that the properties could be made legal. Confused? Read on.
It transpires that the crooked property dealer was convicted of planning crimes in 2011 and was given a paltry fine and minimum sentence. The news wasn’t so good for those he’d duped into buying properties from him. They fell into the ‘illegal’ property camp along with 300,000 others who’d mostly bought properties in similar circumstances.
A year later, the regional government of Andalucia, in a public relations show of transparency and glasnost, agreed that the homes of the elderly Britons could be legalised under terms of a new decree which promised also to bring some kind of sanity to the real estate scandal which affected hundreds of thousands of ‘illegal’ properties in the region. It is this same authority that is now demanding that all of the British pensioners’ homes should be disconnected from public services.
Like a ghastly parody of King Lear, a whole host of frail British expats will be cast out of their homes onto a bleak landscape, left to cope without amenities or any form of compensation from the regional authorities. Most have used up their life savings on buying their Spanish dream properties so the regional government’s latest move is particularly cruel and sadistic. The irony in all this is that the home of the corrupt developer is apparently the only one that will continue to enjoy public services. How pray, has that happened?
Those properties being stripped of public services cannot be reconnected until they are decreed legal, a process that could take many years. In the meantime, many of those unable to face the prospect of living in unsanitary conditions in their twilight years will simply have to leave the area and fall on the mercy of family and friends back in the UK.
Maura Hillen who through her pressure group AUAN, has campaigned rigorously for the rights of those Britons caught up in the property scandal, described the regional government’s latest legal ‘solutions’ as simply making matters worse. But what in fact is the central government in Madrid doing about the situation? Is it simply turning a blind eye to the mounting chaos engulfing this area of Spain?
It seems that for the band of honest and deserving British pensioners who between them invested more than €3 million in Spanish properties-that they bought in all good faith- the future is bleak. For now at least, as their homes succumb to a total black out, there really is no light at the end of the tunnel.