November 2013
Hello again. Unless you have been living under a stone in the Gobi desert you will have seen the coverage of the two houses demolished in Cantoria, Almeria. Its the old, old story. British couple buy from dodgy developer only to find that the house was built illegally. The story was very widely reported, so widely that I have seen it reported on US and even Nigerian websites!
Perhaps the best coverage was from The Times of London who managed to get a quote from the Junta de Andalucia which goes like this:- “The demolition does not damage the image of Andalucia. It would be more damaging to question the legal authority of a court.” Its hard to imagine a more pathetic response. Firstly it clearly does damage the image of Andalucia. The images of a Junta paid for bulldozer smashing down the walls of a house piped around the world are not going to help sell any of the 500,000 empty houses in Andalucia.
Secondly, no one is questioning the legal authority of the court. What is being questioned is the wisdom of the Junta. The reason there has been so much interest outside of Spain in the demolitions is that, for most people, the right to live peacefully in your own home is a fundamental human right. Indeed, it is enshrined in Article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998. It is this “law” that the Junta of Andalucia rides roughshod over by punishing the home owner and not the perpetrator of the crime.
But it seems that ignoring the European Court for Human Rights is quite common in Spain according to a new report by the University of the Pais Vasco. Apparently between 1998 and 2009 Spain was judged against a total of 77 times. More than any other European Country.
The truly sad thing is that two more couples return to England with their lives in ruins. Couples who wont be paying Spanish taxes, wont be buying in Spanish shops and wont be eating in Spanish restaurants. The Spanish political class is so far removed from the harsh realities of life they do not see the destruction they wreak on their own country.
