Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Foreigners fight to save homes on Mediterranean coast from developers
By ED McCULLOUGH
Associated Press Writer
MADRID, Spain (AP) Lured by year-round Mediterranean sunshine, more than a million foreigners have built new homes and lives along Spain's Costa Blanca around Valencia in recent decades.
But their properties are now under threat from developers backed by a regional law allowing them to seize up to 50 percent of private land _ while offering little or no compensation.
Homeowners call it a land grab and have won the backing of a fact-finding committee of the European Parliament which says they are victims of expropriation.
"We are going to court. We are going to fight them," said Barbara Lutz Moraques, who moved to Spain from Kiel, Germany, in the 1960s, married a Spaniard and built a house south of Valencia between the cloud-capped mountains and the azure sea.
Apart from the threat of bulldozers knocking over pine trees she planted 30 years ago to lay a road, she _ like her neighbors _ is obliged by the law to help pay for the streets, lighting and drainage set to accompany the planned housing developments. That could lead to her being hit with a six-figure bill.
"Whatever the original intentions of the Valencia parliament were when the (law) was adopted in 1994, there is no doubt that the application ... has led to a serious abuse of the most elementary rights of many thousands of European citizens either by design or by deceit," the EU committee stated in a critical report last month.
"They have had their homes and their land expropriated ... without any proper recourse to real justice," it stated.
The Regulating Law for Urban Activity, passed in 1994, allows developers to claim land reclassified by authorities for urban use, even from private owners. Much of the land in question is not vacant.
The condition is that developers undertake to build low-cost housing and the corresponding infrastructure. That eventually will provide tax revenue for local governments and public investment at low public cost.
The losers are the people who now own the land, like Tony Ainslie, a 69-year-old Briton who has lived in Spain on and off since 1968.
"We came here for the view and the peace and quiet," said Ainslie, who now lives in Oropesa del Mar, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Valencia. Instead, he says, developers are eyeing the area near his home _ to build a theme park.
Phone calls this week to the Valencia regional government's department of land and housing were not returned. But its press office on Friday sent a communique that stated a new law under consideration will "correct some unbalanced situations that favor the developers."
The statement said homeowners still will have the obligation to help finance public infrastructure _ "like streets and sidewalks, water, sewers, lighting" _ that's intended for their benefit _ regardless of whether the homeowners want it.
"Thousands (of homes) and hundreds of millions of euros" are at stake, said Chuck Svoboda, a 63-year-old Canadian who formed the Valencia Association in Defense of Environmental Rights to fight the law.
He says there are plans to carve out nine building plots within his one-hectare, (2.5-acre) property.
It was at his request, backed by 10,000 signatures, that the EU fact-finding committee traveled last May to the three-province Valencia autonomous region that stretches from Castellon south along the Costa Blanca.
"The myth generated by the Generalitat (Valencia's regional government) is that these are rich foreigners," said Russell Thomson, the British consul in Alicante. "But they're not. They're people who bought their dream home in the sun."
An estimated 1.5 million properties have been bought by families from other, mainly northern, European countries in the last 40 years.
Now homeowners are organizing to defend their rights, the European Union seems to be listening favorably, and developers are quickening their pace to take advantage of the 1994 law before it is replaced.
Karen Marco moved from England three decades ago and now lives outside Benidorm, south of Valencia. She said developers claimed most of her 1,300 square meter (about 1/3 of an acre) property around a small house _ and plan to charge her a five-figure sum to help pay for planned infrastructure improvements.
If she can't pay, she says, she risks losing all her land.
On the Net:
Valencia Association in Defense of Environmental Rights, Human Rights and Development Abuses
http://www.abusos-no.org
By ED McCULLOUGH
Associated Press Writer
MADRID, Spain (AP) Lured by year-round Mediterranean sunshine, more than a million foreigners have built new homes and lives along Spain's Costa Blanca around Valencia in recent decades.
But their properties are now under threat from developers backed by a regional law allowing them to seize up to 50 percent of private land _ while offering little or no compensation.
Homeowners call it a land grab and have won the backing of a fact-finding committee of the European Parliament which says they are victims of expropriation.
"We are going to court. We are going to fight them," said Barbara Lutz Moraques, who moved to Spain from Kiel, Germany, in the 1960s, married a Spaniard and built a house south of Valencia between the cloud-capped mountains and the azure sea.
Apart from the threat of bulldozers knocking over pine trees she planted 30 years ago to lay a road, she _ like her neighbors _ is obliged by the law to help pay for the streets, lighting and drainage set to accompany the planned housing developments. That could lead to her being hit with a six-figure bill.
"Whatever the original intentions of the Valencia parliament were when the (law) was adopted in 1994, there is no doubt that the application ... has led to a serious abuse of the most elementary rights of many thousands of European citizens either by design or by deceit," the EU committee stated in a critical report last month.
"They have had their homes and their land expropriated ... without any proper recourse to real justice," it stated.
The Regulating Law for Urban Activity, passed in 1994, allows developers to claim land reclassified by authorities for urban use, even from private owners. Much of the land in question is not vacant.
The condition is that developers undertake to build low-cost housing and the corresponding infrastructure. That eventually will provide tax revenue for local governments and public investment at low public cost.
The losers are the people who now own the land, like Tony Ainslie, a 69-year-old Briton who has lived in Spain on and off since 1968.
"We came here for the view and the peace and quiet," said Ainslie, who now lives in Oropesa del Mar, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Valencia. Instead, he says, developers are eyeing the area near his home _ to build a theme park.
Phone calls this week to the Valencia regional government's department of land and housing were not returned. But its press office on Friday sent a communique that stated a new law under consideration will "correct some unbalanced situations that favor the developers."
The statement said homeowners still will have the obligation to help finance public infrastructure _ "like streets and sidewalks, water, sewers, lighting" _ that's intended for their benefit _ regardless of whether the homeowners want it.
"Thousands (of homes) and hundreds of millions of euros" are at stake, said Chuck Svoboda, a 63-year-old Canadian who formed the Valencia Association in Defense of Environmental Rights to fight the law.
He says there are plans to carve out nine building plots within his one-hectare, (2.5-acre) property.
It was at his request, backed by 10,000 signatures, that the EU fact-finding committee traveled last May to the three-province Valencia autonomous region that stretches from Castellon south along the Costa Blanca.
"The myth generated by the Generalitat (Valencia's regional government) is that these are rich foreigners," said Russell Thomson, the British consul in Alicante. "But they're not. They're people who bought their dream home in the sun."
An estimated 1.5 million properties have been bought by families from other, mainly northern, European countries in the last 40 years.
Now homeowners are organizing to defend their rights, the European Union seems to be listening favorably, and developers are quickening their pace to take advantage of the 1994 law before it is replaced.
Karen Marco moved from England three decades ago and now lives outside Benidorm, south of Valencia. She said developers claimed most of her 1,300 square meter (about 1/3 of an acre) property around a small house _ and plan to charge her a five-figure sum to help pay for planned infrastructure improvements.
If she can't pay, she says, she risks losing all her land.
On the Net:
Valencia Association in Defense of Environmental Rights, Human Rights and Development Abuses
http://www.abusos-no.org
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