Almuñécar Town Council, with unanimity between all parties, approved a motion to get the Central Government involved with the Urb. Carmenes del Mar affair.
Almuñécar wants Madrid to declare the said urbanización as “Zona afectada gravemente por una emergencia de protección civil,” which needs no translation.
The Town Council also wants the Junta de Andalucía to “exercise its responsibility and declare the area as an emergency of general interest in Andalucía.”
They want these two administrations to pull their weight, so to speak, and between them offer a definitive solution to “the people who in some cases have lost their homes when they collapsed and others who were ordered to move out because of a risk of them collapsing.”
Construction work started on Urbanización Carmenes del Mar at the end of the 90s and within a short amount of time (2006) the hillside started to slip, literally making uninhabitable scores of dwellings.
Editorial comment: What has followed since is drawn out licitation with the Town Hall dodging its responsibility for having issued a building licence for the project despite it being common knowledge amongst the older folk that this hillside was unstable.
The Junta de Andalucia has also dodged its responsibility for having approved this area as buildable, once submitted by Almuñécar Town hall.
The hillside had been an unspoilt, pinetree-covered hillside and part of the beautiful panorama of La Herradura Bay but the building boom bulldozed all before it. Nobody can blame people wanting to buy homes with such splendid views of the bay, but municipal and regional politicians deserve every bit of the blame for this disaster.
Finally, it must be pointed out that not all of this urbanización has problems as the upper part is perfectly stable. However, in total five dwellings have fallen down, 19 have been declared to be in a ruinous state in imminent danger of collapse. Seven are on the point of having an evacuation order slapped on them. Lastly sewage and water mains have also been affected.
(News/Noticias: Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)
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