THERE’S A JOKE that goes around at election time in Spain to the effect that it would make more sense to vote for property developers and cut out the middlemen — the politicians. Politics and urbanismo go hand in glove here in a shabby symbiosis in which one cannot prosper without the other. This is true at every level, from contracts for motorways and dams to the sordid little affair to which I have fallen victim.
In 1998 I bought a little run-down house just outside the village of St Jaume dels Domenys in Baix Penedès, an hour south of Barcelona. The house is the smallest in a row of eight, sandwiched between an almond orchard and a few acres of tempranillo vines. Apart from ourselves, a Basque and a Spaniard, the neighbours are all Catalan, most with a long association with the area, including one elderly man who was born in one of the houses. It’s all very neighbourly: the children run free, we share vegetables from our allotments and get together to make paella or have a barbecue.
Then last year we each received a letter from the local authority with the “good news” that the land opposite had been reclassified from rural to urban, permission had been granted to build 16 houses, the dirt road would be asphalted and new drains laid. Even better, between the eight households we were to contribute €77,801 towards the €164,578 (£112,144) cost of the works (the local authority’s share was €8,644), with state subsidy paying the rest. Had anyone asked, all but two of us would have explained that we — and the children especially — liked our dirt road the way it was and that, as for drains, our septic tanks were perfectly adequate. But no one asked. The authorities had complied with the minimal legal requirement, that is, they posted a notice in the town hall, no doubt safe in the knowledge that none of us was likely to see it.
Between five households we managed to buy eight of the 16 parcels of land, thus conserving for the time being our view of the vines, though, if the mayor has his way, these too will soon disappear beneath his favoured eyesore, the industrial estates that over the past few years have begun marching from the village towards the sea, obliterating centuries-old vineyards and olive groves without even the excuse of creating more than a handful of jobs.
We wrote to the mayor requesting a meeting. A month passed, another letter was sent. Another week or two passed before his Mercedes roared up in a cloud of dust outside our homes. The question we wanted answered was simple: why had we not been consulted? The mayor scoffed. The town hall couldn’t go around consulting people every time it wanted to carry out some work. After all, people generally didn’t know what was good for them. But we are paying for it, we said, an average of around €6,500 per household, surely that gave us some right to be consulted? “You are paying for an improvement. We are doing this so that you can enjoy your surroundings more,” he said. But we don’t want it. We will enjoy our surroundings less, not more. This, he said in a variety of ways, merely proved his point that people don’t know what is good for them. We were going to have pavements, streetlamps and a roundabout. How could we be so ungrateful? He added indignantly that the planning permission to build new houses greatly increased the value of the plots of land. He simply refused to believe that we preferred the view to money and that we lived there because we liked it, not because of any potential it might have as an investment.
Advertisement
Last month The Times reported how in Valencia the law has no regard for natural justice to the point where land can be developed at an owner’s expense and without his consent. After a campaign by property owners and MEPs took the case to the European Court, the Valencian government has backed down in word but not in deed. The Act is still in force and the campaigners say that plans to reform it do not go nearly far enough. In one form or another, this is going on all over Spain. Now campaigns have sprung up in the Pyrenees against the unfettered development of second homes.
But urbanismo is king, it has its own droit de seigneur, and no one and nothing must block its path. For centuries Spain was run by caciques (feudal overlords) and has been a democracy only since 1978. However, when it comes to urbanismo, Spanish democracy is no more than a change of hands in the cookie jar.