January 2014

Hello again and Happy New Year. When is a house legal? If a house has a segregation licence, a building licence, architect approval, escritura, catastral registry AND licence of first occupation would you say it was legal? Yes me too. Well that was at least until last week when the council of Alcaucin, under extreme pressure from the Junta de Andalucia voted to revoke these licences and declare 16 homes that have stood for 10 years illegal.
Surely some mistake I hear you shout. Nope. This sorry tale started when an an anonymous resident of Alcaucin denounced 66 houses in the town for irregularities in the licencing process. Not the fault of the owner but caused by dishonest developers, lawyers and, of course, corrupt politicians. Because of these irregularities the Junta is pushing them to be declared illegal even though, at the same time, the council is trying to incorporate the zones as urban in the new town plan.
The owners, most of who are pensioners, are not rich people with second homes but live here all the year round. They were until very recently completely unaware that their home had been denounced at all and now are unable to sell their home should they need to and will face the worry that one day their home will be bulldozed away. This shows clearly that the problems are not getting better they are getting worse and that there is no end in sight.
We at SOHA.ES have now to plan our response ready for our AGM this month. It is clear now that dialogue and reason have failed and that we must now take our challenge to the courts. Perhaps only by repeatedly losing cases in the European Courts for Human Rights can we persuade them to do the right thing – change the law and declare an amnesty. But this takes money!
It is ironic that those who made a lot of money by breaking the law, the developers, the lawyers, the architects and, of course, the politicians have no threat being made to their homes at all.