September 2010
Hello and welcome to my monthly column and a special welcome to those who are here on holiday. Talking about holidays I want to tell you the story of Mark and Julie Pritchard who I met the other day at their home at the western end of Lake Viñuela. They are out here with their three children for their annual summer holiday at the house they built themselves.
They bought 2 plots with existing building and segregation licences in 2002 using an established Nerja lawyer. They employed a professional architect and even conducted a geological survey which prompted them to to pin their foundations to the underlying rock (damn good idea up that end of the lake).
They built their charming house in 2004 and by 2005 had a registered escritura, the house was registered in the catastral, they had a nota simple, all IBIs paid, a water contract (though they are seeing precious little of that this summer), and an electricity contract. All in all probably more legal than very many in the Viñuela valley. So what could possibly go wrong?
In November 2007 they received a denuncia from the Viñuela town hall prompted by an complaint from the Junta de Andalucia. It was delivered to the wrong house with someone else’s name scribbled over their own. Their lawyer advised them not to fight it they would lose! So now they find that after three years they, and their neighbours, Paul and Pat Mitchell, have had their licences revoked by the court in Malaga. They have not done one single thing wrong, in fact they bent over backwards to do things right but they cannot sell their house and they cannot build on their other plot. They are left with no recourse other than to sue the town hall.
What is interesting is that now (but perhaps not forever) the Junta has lost its appetite for further denuncias. The problem is seemingly finite, unregistered houses in 2007 have slipped past undetected. A process was started and stopped and those unlucky few who were caught in it are suffering. While our campaign has been successful the only route forward for home owners like Mark and Julie is through Spain’s painfully slow legal system.
What is more interesting is that the whole process proceeded without any direct involvement from the owners of the houses. No court appearances, no affidavits, no statements. Just a letter to say the licence is revoked. In fact, I would wager that there are people reading this column who have also had their licences revoked……..and don’t even know it.
