Re: More Demolitions
 

Given that Spain is rated higher on the quality of life indexes, what does that make the UK? A fourth world country?!

Btw, it does seem that Spain's harshest critics on this forum dont even live in the country. Why do you spend your days doing this?

Re: More Demolitions
 

Of course I believe. In the UK I used to give presents (bribes if you like) to the postman, dustman, newspaper boy, and take yearly parcels to the council and police.

Here in Spain I don’t give anything to the newspaper boy.

Re: More Demolitions
 

Fascinating. London, eh, full of foreigners. Cor! Meanwhile, eight elderly retired British families were visited by the Guardia Civil over Christmas (no doubt with candles and the odd wassail) with final demolition orders.
Remember how much fuss one unjust demolition (the Priors in Vera) caused? Now we are looking at eight, and the 'delegado provincial' is glibly talking about 11,000 illegal homes in Almería.
What was he doing when they were building them?

Re: More Demolitions
 

Daily Mail has the story, great publicity isn't it:(

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl...bulldozed.html

Re: More Demolitions
 

I said this before and say it again...It is not only the British caught up in these scams.
Here in Galicia, apart form the Chalets they are now knocking down on the coast here is the latest bit of news about illegally built and sold buildings.
http://www.lavozdegalicia.es/galicia...6306518300.htm
It seems the only real way to protect yourself form this is to purchase an older property.

Re: More Demolitions
 

From further South it's Spanish houses

http://www.cadiznews.co.uk/info2.cfm?info_id=24362

Re: More Demolitions
 

A further story doing the rounds here in Almería. Another house will be demolished on Tuesday January 12th, this time in Las Lomas, Vera (near the Priors). I've seen the paperwork. The Junta de Andalucia has gone raving mad!

Re: More Demolitions
 

Taking aboard the valid point that Spanish houses have been demolished too, why have the regional governments in Andalucia and Valencia adopted such a ridiculous attitude towards illegal houses?

Could it be that they have seen many of their party members, of either political divide, mostly the mayors at local level, arrested and put in prison? That’s where the regional politicians have come from, they all started off at local level, as town mayors themselves, before progressing to the higher, regional level.

Apart from the more obvious ones lining their own pockets, a lot of them have acted in the belief that they were helping their own, Spanish population, by raising monies then used by the town hall to improve local infrastructures.

It would all have gone on happily for ever more, if it hadn’t been for those pesky foreigners starting to complain about something that didn’t concern them. Instead of complaining, shouldn’t they have been grateful that they were allowed to build their mansions on Spanish land in the first place?

I watched an interview with such a former local mayor, who is obviously waiting for the Guardia to knock on his door, where he explained that everyone knew the houses were illegal, especially the foreigners who were buying houses for four million Pesetas, where everyone knew they should have been 40 million Pesetas – those were his exact words.

He finished off by saying that the new town hall administration should have collected the fines at the time, as they had always done, and the regional government would have got their share.

Re: More Demolitions
 

I think you might well have a point