August 2012

Hello again. I hope you all enjoyed your summer, I certainly did, but now it is time to turn our thoughts, once again, to the realities of life. And for us at SOHA.ES that means the continuing fight to have our homes made fully legal. After the summer break it is worth reflecting for a while on our strategy. How can we get the Junta de Andalucia to take the right actions to resolve this sorry, and by now long running, situation?

Given the economic situation here then I think the answer lies in the economy. One in four Andalucians have no job and that figure rises to 50% for young people. The prospects look very grim indeed.

I have described before the contribution made by pensioners from the rest of the European Union. There are 487,000 pensioners from the rest of Europe in Spain. The average pension is 13,500€. Therefore, the spending power of us pensioners is over 6.5 billion Euros. 2 billion more than Spanish exports to the United States! In a village the size of Viñuela the spending power of the pensioners is in the region of 15 million Euros per year!

However, the opportunity for Spain is huge. According to Wikipedia there are between 3 and 4 million empty houses in Spain. A conservative estimate would suggest that 500,000 of these are in Andalucia.

I have for a long time believed that Andalucia could become the Florida of Europe. The weather is good, the cost of living is less than elsewhere in Europe and the standard of care is high. If those 500,000 empty houses were sold to overseas pensioners the cash injection to the Spanish economy could be around 60 billion Euros and an annual spend 13.5 billion Euros. This kind of money would make a huge difference to the Andalucian economy.

But for this to happen the Junta HAS to fix the problem of housing legality. No one will buy a house here without complete confidence in the system. Houses bought in good faith must have 100% legality restored to them and the sooner they get on and do it, the better for everyone. Not least of all the Spanish themselves.