Sunday, December 18, 2005
EL PAÍS, Friday, December 16, 2005 NEWS / 3
C. VÁZQUEZ / E. MOLTÓ
Valencia / Alicante
A witty person once said: “Don’t steal — the government doesn’t like the competition.” The graffiti could have been referring to the regional government of Valencia, under fire from the European Union for a 1994 urbanization law that allows authorities to expropriate property from home-owners without their consent.
On Tuesday, the European Parliament voted 550 to 45 to support a report that called Valencia’s Urban Planning Regulatory Law (LRAU) a “violation of the basic rights of many thousands of European Union citizens.” Down in Valencia, the locals refer to it as the “land-grab law.”
In 2001, two years after lawyer José Crespo bought his home in San Juan, Alicante, expropriation rumors began to spread throughout the area. But inquiries with local officials yielded no answers. “I began to investigate, and I found that a company had presented a project to urbanize two million square meters, including my property,” he said. For two months, Crespo visited town hall each week to see if any more projects were on the books — he found nine in all. Some respected the existing homes, while others wanted to raze them. “It was humiliating to discover amid unintelligible plans what third parties wanted to do with your house,” Crespo said. “I began to think about Europe, and the European directives on public contracts.” A specialist in European law, Crespo said that the projects were not published in the official government gazette, and did not abide by the bloc’s rules of transparency and competition.
He wasn’t the only affected, and angry, homeowner. Over the past two years, the European Parliament has received about 15,000 complaints and claims from Valencia residents about the urbanization plan. Under the current law, existing homeowners are being asked to pay for building roads, sewers and lighting for new construction near their land. Also, some are being forced to abandon their land at knock-down prices.
In Finestrat de Benidorm, Juan and Karen Marco’s home falls into a territory scheduled for urbanization. The couple has owned the one-family house and the land around it for 20 years. “Now our house does not belong to us,” Juan Marco said. “They are paying us less than half of what the property is worth on the market, and we will have to rent an apartment. They don’t care about people, and it makes you feel helpless.”
Others, meanwhile, have been obliged by the law to pay for part of the planned infrastructure. The Gales, a British couple who moved to Benissa, Alicante, after retiring, are facing a 40,000 Euro bill and the loss of 800 square meters of their property. Another British couple, Graham and Janice Fisher, have lived for a decade in a rural house in Alicante near Mount Maigmó. The town hall now wants to convert 1.5 million square meters of the surrounding land into 1,300 houses. “We did see some people walking round part of the land near our house, measuring,” Jan Fisher told BBC radio in 2003. “Then we went along to the town hall, we saw that there was a plan already prepared to build thousands of houses on a mountainside where there are fewer than a hundred. We also saw we would have to pay thousands of euros towards this project.”
“The Ley Reguladora de la Actividad Urbanística is being used by unscrupulous developers to simply get their hands on huge tracts of land, irrespective of the fact that there are people already living there or perfectly legitimate landowners, house owners etc.,” Graham Fisher added. “This is an abuse.” They and thousands of other British citizens in the region have taken the local authorities to court.
At the moment, the European Union appears to be on their side. On Wednesday, the European Commission gave Spain three weeks to adapt the law to EU standards. If not, people such as the farmer Enrique Rubio will not only lose his home, but his livelihood. “They will destroy me,” he said. “It’s unfair. We only want to keep on working.” Rubio and his Eco Iris company cultivate greens such as lettuce, broccoli and celery on about 40,000 square meters of land. Valencia wants to confiscate 4,000 square meters to build low-income housing, and an unidentified amount for other construction. “They are robbing our land,” Rubio said. “They are taking advantage of people.
C. VÁZQUEZ / E. MOLTÓ
Valencia / Alicante
A witty person once said: “Don’t steal — the government doesn’t like the competition.” The graffiti could have been referring to the regional government of Valencia, under fire from the European Union for a 1994 urbanization law that allows authorities to expropriate property from home-owners without their consent.
On Tuesday, the European Parliament voted 550 to 45 to support a report that called Valencia’s Urban Planning Regulatory Law (LRAU) a “violation of the basic rights of many thousands of European Union citizens.” Down in Valencia, the locals refer to it as the “land-grab law.”
In 2001, two years after lawyer José Crespo bought his home in San Juan, Alicante, expropriation rumors began to spread throughout the area. But inquiries with local officials yielded no answers. “I began to investigate, and I found that a company had presented a project to urbanize two million square meters, including my property,” he said. For two months, Crespo visited town hall each week to see if any more projects were on the books — he found nine in all. Some respected the existing homes, while others wanted to raze them. “It was humiliating to discover amid unintelligible plans what third parties wanted to do with your house,” Crespo said. “I began to think about Europe, and the European directives on public contracts.” A specialist in European law, Crespo said that the projects were not published in the official government gazette, and did not abide by the bloc’s rules of transparency and competition.
He wasn’t the only affected, and angry, homeowner. Over the past two years, the European Parliament has received about 15,000 complaints and claims from Valencia residents about the urbanization plan. Under the current law, existing homeowners are being asked to pay for building roads, sewers and lighting for new construction near their land. Also, some are being forced to abandon their land at knock-down prices.
In Finestrat de Benidorm, Juan and Karen Marco’s home falls into a territory scheduled for urbanization. The couple has owned the one-family house and the land around it for 20 years. “Now our house does not belong to us,” Juan Marco said. “They are paying us less than half of what the property is worth on the market, and we will have to rent an apartment. They don’t care about people, and it makes you feel helpless.”
Others, meanwhile, have been obliged by the law to pay for part of the planned infrastructure. The Gales, a British couple who moved to Benissa, Alicante, after retiring, are facing a 40,000 Euro bill and the loss of 800 square meters of their property. Another British couple, Graham and Janice Fisher, have lived for a decade in a rural house in Alicante near Mount Maigmó. The town hall now wants to convert 1.5 million square meters of the surrounding land into 1,300 houses. “We did see some people walking round part of the land near our house, measuring,” Jan Fisher told BBC radio in 2003. “Then we went along to the town hall, we saw that there was a plan already prepared to build thousands of houses on a mountainside where there are fewer than a hundred. We also saw we would have to pay thousands of euros towards this project.”
“The Ley Reguladora de la Actividad Urbanística is being used by unscrupulous developers to simply get their hands on huge tracts of land, irrespective of the fact that there are people already living there or perfectly legitimate landowners, house owners etc.,” Graham Fisher added. “This is an abuse.” They and thousands of other British citizens in the region have taken the local authorities to court.
At the moment, the European Union appears to be on their side. On Wednesday, the European Commission gave Spain three weeks to adapt the law to EU standards. If not, people such as the farmer Enrique Rubio will not only lose his home, but his livelihood. “They will destroy me,” he said. “It’s unfair. We only want to keep on working.” Rubio and his Eco Iris company cultivate greens such as lettuce, broccoli and celery on about 40,000 square meters of land. Valencia wants to confiscate 4,000 square meters to build low-income housing, and an unidentified amount for other construction. “They are robbing our land,” Rubio said. “They are taking advantage of people.
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