The Chairman of the CRA has kindly received an invitation from the A Sector Homeowners Clean Up Committee inviting all CRA members to a dedication ceremony for the new Memorial Garden on A Sector to be held at 4pm, 10th April 2010. The ceremony will be followed by refreshments and hopefully some entertainment.

The CRA Liaison Committee is very happy to support this community based project and will certainly be represented at the ceremony and would encourage all CRA members from all areas of Camposol to also attend and support if possible.

Paramount takes a serious look at MURCIA

Paramount Pictures has chosen the region of Murcia to prepare for its landing in Europe. It is in the planning and viability stage of constructing the largest theme and entertaining park in Spain. They plan to compete with Disneyland Paris. Being Americans…they have a put a short time span for the viability study that will commence now and end in just one month.

The mild climate in the Region of Murcia with 300 days of sunshine a year, its location in central Mediterranean Arc and the new international airport, along with the AVE line High Speed Train, are all factors that have influenced the decision. Murcia Spain is a wonderful investment even in the downturn of the economy and we as owners of Condado De Alhama & Camposol can only hope and celebrate the coming of such a company to our region of Spain.

Murcia would become the entertainment center of Spain with a complex of 2.5 square kilometers (equivalent to two thousand five hundred football fields) to create 20,000 jobs and would bring three million new tourists into the country and region.

Paramount is offered Condado De Alhama II as the Best site in Murcia

As we reported last week, Paramount Studios are interested in bringing a theme park to Murcia Spain and are currently performing a viability study which it plans to complete this month. The mayor offers Condado De Alhama II to Paramount as the best location for the theme park, the parcel of land has all the paperwork approved with the environmental planning department. It also has guaranteed water supply, has its own electrical substation and a water treatment plant. Is close to the new international airport Corvera to open late this year and is ideally located on route to Mazarron. It is believed that the plan would be endorsed by the city of Totana.

So, what does that mean for Condado De Alhama I & Camposol owners? Well it means you should be wishing real hard. The property prices on Condado & Camposol will sky rocket if this plan is accepted and approved by Paramount. The viability study will be completed soon, if it is approved, crack open the champagne if you own a property here.

By copying and pasting the link below you can watch a speech made by Marta Andreasen (UKIP) the MEP for the South West of England during a debate following a statement on the “Programme of the Spanish Presidency” by Prime Minister Zapatero in the European Parliament, Strasbourg European Parliament, 20th Jan 2010.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD0wk5cK4LU&feature=related

The CRA will be making contact with Marta Andreasen to inform her of the situation we find ourselves in on Camposol.

CRA Official Answer

Taken from The Leader Newspaper.

For years unstoppable development fueled a real estate bubble that became the ideal breeding ground for political and business corruption schemes, with ties to illegal construction. And even now, two years after the bubble has burst with a bang and plunged Spain into a deep economic recession, the extent of that wave of corruption is still unravelling the length and breadth of the Valencian region. The common denominator in all the cases uncovered, in places such as Catral, Bigastro, Zarra, Ll ber or Montroi, is the fact that they are all small communities whose mayors, in connivance with public workers, engineers, lawyers, developers and notaries, took advantage of the freedom that town halls have to run their own planning affairs.

Besides fattening municipal coffers, local authorities also lined their own pockets by looking the other way as thousands of homes were built on land zoned as rural often in exchange for hefty bribes. The arrest of the former mayor of Montroi for authorizing the construction of 77 houses on rural land is just the latest in a series of corruption cases that have, on occasion, reached Mafia- like proportions: in Polop, the courts are investigating whether the former chief of town planning, Juan Cano, hired two gunmen to murder the mayor, Alejandro Ponsoda, and have free rein to handle his affairs.

Faced with a lack of discipline at the municipal level and an inefficient oversight by the Valencian government (the Consell), the police and the judiciary have finally stepped in to try to curb corruption through criminal proceedings. Experts agree that the predatory development model of the 1990s must be buried, and the officials involved expelled from electoral rolls. Both the Socialists and the Popular Party (PP), as well as nationalist groups, have been tainted by cases of municipal corruption.

On the other hand, the politicians involved know that, so far, graft has never lost any one of them an election. European buyers have been the main victims of these schemes, especially British and German retirees who make up large communities in the Valencian region. Encouraged by their own thriving economies, they bought illegally built properties almost with their eyes closed. The swindles were helped along by a lack of ethics on the part of local agents who knew the operations were unlawful. When the deception became public knowledge, the duped owners began demanding that their homes be made legal and requested compensation for damages.

Alarm bells regarding the legal insecurity of Valencian real estate first went off following a complaint filed by a group called Abusos Urban sticos No (or, No to Town Planning Abuse). Enrique Climent, its president, underscores that the flood of corruption cases that have surfaced in the last three years are partly the result of that original complaint. Let us not forget that the Spanish justice system is slow, he says, adding that the origin of the problem lies in Valencia s town planning laws. The problem began with the LRAU [Ley Reguladora de la Actividad Urban stica], a zoning law that evidences a complete lack of judgment or logic, and which enabled a bunch of people [the developers] to behave like rustlers and appropriate the land that belonged to individual owners. One party [the Valencian Socialists] approved it, and another party [PP] enforced it for 11 years without regulations. Since 2002, Climent s group has filed over 20,000 complaints 80 percent on behalf of residents of the Valencian region with the European Parliament s Petitions Committee. This body sent delegations to the area in 2004, 2005 and 2007 to verify the reports of real estate abuses. Their conclusions were published in what became known as the Auken Report, a devastating document that explained all the traps that lay hidden behind Valencian town planning.

They said that these alleged instances of abuse were isolated cases, just a few black sheep, says Climent. But time has proven us right, and the herd no longer looks so white. Climent also highlights that the buyers of illegal properties, especially the British, bought them in good faith. They bought them because their economic situation allowed for it, but they risked everything in these operations, and sold their homes in exchange for an illegal property in Spain. They were tricked. In one case, an English citizen who bought a home in Montroi signed two contracts, one in English and the other one in Spanish, but it wasn t just the language that was different so were the clauses. Manuel Alcaraz, a professor of Constitutional Law at Alicante University and president of the group Plataforma de Iniciativas Ciudadanas (or Platform for Citizen Initiatives), says that the root of the problem is the philosophy behind all the building. It was all the result of a construction model based on making money in the short run, which leads inescapably to speculation and corruption, he says. Another factor, adds Alcaraz, was the complicity of Spanish society. This complicity reached the very top of the political parties, especially the PP, he says. No effort has been made toward regeneration or political ethics. The PP built its political empire on opacity. Alcaraz also thinks that a change in legislation is in order. They should introduce unjust enrichment as a crime. It can’t be normal for public officials who make 3,000 a month to display such flashy lifestyles. Alcaraz points to the ineffectiveness of control mechanisms as the key to understanding why town planning corruption became so generalized. This lack of oversight begins with town halls, where the departments for zoning discipline have done nothing to curb the excesses, and goes all the way up to the Consell. Carlos Arribas, an environmental activist and expert in real estate issues, agrees. The proliferation of illegal homes on rural land has one root cause: the passivity of the Consell in exercising its powers, as described in the 1994 law on land zoned as not for building. That law includes enough mechanisms, such as the declarations of Community Interest Zone, to have put a stop to all the illegal construction, says Arribas, the spokesman for the Alicante branch of the environmental group Ecologists in Action.

Another expert points to the deregulation of zoning laws, the lack of oversight and the connivance of public workers and other professionals as the cause of real estate corruption. Honorio Fern ndez, president of the consumers association AECU, which filed a suit that uncovered a construction scandal in Catral, says: Montroi, Lluber it s all the same, and a result of the successive deregulation of the zoning laws that began under former Prime Minister Jos Mara Azar and that extended to the Valencian region and its permissive LRAU, which was implemented without further regulations until 2005, he explains. Fernandez notes that the cooperation of several types of professionals was essential for the swindles to work.

A Foreign Office minister warned Spain on Sunday that knocking down British expatriates’ houses was hurting its economy.

John and Muriel Burns have spent the past decade pursuing their dream of a Spanish idyll, tending the garden and caring for their pool.

Chris Bryant, Minister for Europe, said that the country was undermining efforts to create a recovery in its beleaguered housing market.

He was speaking yesterday during a visit to south-eastern Spain to meet British expatriates who have been told that their homes will be bulldozed after Spanish authorities declared their construction illegal.

The authorities there have been waging a campaign against former officials accused of allowing overdevelopment of coastal regions. Local governments issued building licences for the properties, but these were later nullified following court action instigated by a higher regional government.

Mr Bryant cautioned: “The housing market in Spain is not going to recover quickly if pictures of bulldozers knocking down expats’ homes are appearing in British newspapers.

“Everyone I’ve spoken to in Spain says they want to find a solution but wanting a solution and getting one are two different things.”

He said: “Obviously it’s not for the British Government to tell the Spanish what to do. But I’m pushing the message hard at all government levels that I meet here that they have got to put political willpower into these problems, whether it’s an amnesty, whether it’s a change in the law, whatever the solution is that is needed. That is the point I am pushing.

“I have to say also that there is an enormous difference between the Britons who just make a cursory legal deal – that is always ill advised – and those who have done everything they should or could have done but still find themselves in deep trouble.”

Mr Bryant spent the weekend advising expatriates in Andalucia on issues ranging from property rights to health care. He visited Torrevieja, the fastest-growing town on the Costa Blanca, Malaga, the capital of the Costa del Sol, and the town of Albox, where eight British families are fighting demolition orders issued at the end of last year.

John and Muriel Burns were among the first to receive the demolition orders in Albox. The pensioners emigrated to Spain in 2001. “They did everything to dot the ‘I’s and cross the ‘T’s that they possibly could have to obtain the permission they required” to build their dream house, Mr Bryant said.

“But it turns out that the permission should not have been given. That was no fault of theirs whatsoever – but now they face the prospect of having their home demolished.”

After hearing that his home would be bulldozed, Mr Burns declared that he and his wife would chain themselves to the house.

“If this building comes down, then we will be underneath it,” he said.

Mr Bryant said he was able to tell worried Britons that the Andalusian regional government was appointing a full-time official to deal with the concerns of British expatriates. The official will provide advice on property regulations, health care and residence requirements. Mr Bryant warned: “People buying property anywhere abroad, not just in Spain, have to take at least twice as much trouble as they do at home to make sure everything is legal. It is so easy to go to a lawyer because he’s cheaper.

“Then later you find out that he wasn’t an independent lawyer at all, but was working all the time on behalf of the land developer and you are really stuffed.”