Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)PLANS to build more than two thousand new homes on land around Alhama de Granada have been shelved following a regional government preliminary report.
And the company that had intended to build a golf course, hotel and housing on 900 hectares outside the town have pulled the plug on the deal following threats by the public prosecutors office to investigate the legality of the project.
Mayor Francisco Escobedo had asked the opinion of the Junta de Andalucía before including the two thousand new homes at Valparaíso, Júrtiga and Navazo in the PGOU town expansion plan earlier this year after coming under fire from members of his own socialist PSOE party and opposition councillors.
Officials from the environment department of the regional government informed him the new homes would be unviable and land of ecological importance would be lost due to their construction.
Although the report is not legally binding, Señor Escobedo decided to cancel the agreements he had signed with the construction companies involved to build the homes on ten million square metres (m2) of land in the three localities to avoid any future problems.
Speaking to newspaper La Opinion, Gerardo Sanchez, the provincial Environment Director of the Junta de Andalucía, said: “The ayuntamiento (town hall) of Alhama de Granada wanted to know the legal possibilities of building on land at Valparaíso, Júrtiga and Navazo. Our architects deemed the project unviable.
“A great deal of land near the Sierra de Alhama, Tejaeda and Almijarra Natural Park would also be lost if the plans went ahead.”
In a separate incidence, Llano 40 – the company behind the Golf Balneario de Alhama project – have cancelled the plans to build a golf course, hotel and 750 homes near the Tajos de Alhama, a gorge that has been declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (places deemed by central government to be of high cultural importance).
The public prosecutors office had announced it was going to investigate possible irregularities in the processing of documents that had ceded 100 hectares of land to the company.
