Claire Wilson
A GROUP of Brits staged a protest in Cantoria last weekend after a spate of home demolitions in the area.
More than 400 people, including some senior politicians, gathered outside the Palacio de Almanzora with banners reading ´Yes to Solutions, No to Demolitions´
The protest follows the bulldozing of a number of so-called illegal homes in the area, which were built without a permit by a building company, or were unofficially signed off by a previous mayor.
Helen Prior, one of the area´s first victims of demolition, spoke to the gathered crowd about the loss of her €690,000 home in 2008.
She said: “My husband and I had worked and saved for 45 years to build that house, and we have not received any compensation.
“What good did it do, besides showing Andalucia to be a poor and uncaring community?”
The Olive Press broke news of the most recent demolitions a couple of weeks ago.
Frank Doke and Peter Hegarty were given 30 days notice to remove their possessions from their Cantoria home before the bulldozers moved in.
Around 13,000 homes in the wider Almanzora Valley in Northern Almeria face the threat of demolition, after being built on flood plains and natural parks.
The group is calling for greater political co-operation to ´regularise´ the homes, that is, to legalise them.
An all-party meeting to discuss the issue, slated for November 11, was cancelled however, following the withdrowal of PSOE.
People often comment that just one or two people are affected with demolitions, but the truth is that many tens of thousands of people (and maybe many more) will actually be affected. The random demolition of properties is nonsensical when so many in the immediate vicinity of those already demolished are in exactly the same legal situation.
There needs to be moratorium for the homes that were granted all the correct paperwork but were then made retrospectively illegal. Or will Spain just bury its head in the sand and allow these stories to continue for another decade or more?
Your article is misleading, 13,000 we’re not built on river beds and parkland, the Junta estimate 900 in this category. The rest were bought in good faith under the guidance of rogue town halls, builders, solicitors, estate agents, all with the sole aim to get rich quick and these criminals knew full well they were being built for all in the know to see on rustic land, not parcelised and without accurate paperwork.