November 2010

Hello again.  Lots to talk about today so lets crack on.  First off, Steve Wood isn’t leaving after all.  His project in the UK didn’t happen as expected so I am delighted to announce that he will be staying on as Membership Secretary.  It’s just as well as I had no response whatsoever to last month’s call for help.

On the 1st of October Philip and Mario went to Seville to meet with  the Director of Inspection of Territory at Junta de Andalucia, Rosa Urioste.  Also present was the Director of Urbanismo, Daniel Fernandez.  The meeting was very cordial and the discussion flowed for over 2 hours with follow up meetings agreed. You can read more about the meeting on SOHA.ES.es  but what stood out  to me is that the Junta confirmed that the process of regularisation will include costs.  Those costs would depend on what works needed to be done to the infrastructure of an urbanisation to bring them to a specific standard including streets, lighting, sewarage, etc. Now, while some irregular urbanisations have very good infrastructure, in my experience the majority have little or no street lighting, basic sewarage systems and muddy tracks leading to the houses.  The cost for many houses could easily exceed €10,000.  While many might feel that they would be happy to have the problem sorted for a sum such as this the vast majority with whom I have spoken think that this would be decidedly unfair since there was no mention of this when they bought their house!  What do you think?  Let me know at

At a recent meeting with the Mayor of Alcaucin we were told that the Ayuntamiento was running a deficit of €10,000 a month.  Also that there were 400 unemployed people in the village.  He said that  95% of Ayuntamientos in Spain were in a worse situation.   Now,  we know that there are 2,000 irregular houses in Alcaucin, if the average cost to regularise were €5,000 then that would amount to a revenue stream of €10,000,000.  Is that figure just a bit too tempting?

It seems to me imperative that we have representatives in ALL the Ayuntamientos of the Axarquia.