Almuñécar town hall to pay over 100,000 euros for plans to develop Cerro Gordo in 2005

Almuñécar-La Herradura town hall will have to pay at least 100,000 euros for an unfulfilled urban development agreement signed in 2005, during Juan Carlos Benavides’s time as mayor. The agreement involved plans to build a large housing development in the Maro-Cerro Gordo cliffs natural park area. Now the same area has been the focus of recent controversy over the felling of 40,000 square metres of forest and has received criticism from Benavides himself.

According to the current deputy mayor, Juan José Ruiz Joya, the town hall will be obliged to pay at least 104,053 euros to the company Albocasa Mediterránea S. L., the main owner of some 357,023 square metres of land, of which 231,000 is classified as urban, where the development was planned.

The management and planning agreements signed on 10 February 2005, which IDEAL newspaper has had access to, processed the reclassification from rural to urban land in order to include them in the General Urban Development Plan (PGOU) at the time.

The agreement establishes that in the event that the land was not reclassified in accordance with the planning agreement agreed between Albocasa and Benavides, the agreement would be terminated and the town hall would have to reimburse the amounts paid. The revision and approval of a new plan did not succeed, but the division out of the land was carried out, at a cost of 104,053 euros to Albocasa Mediterránea S. L..

A few weeks ago, the environmental organisation, Ecologistas en Acción, denounced the felling and burning of a plot of land "in one of the few remaining forests in the Cerro Gordo area" in La Herradura, in order to plant subtropical crops as well as the building of a warehouse with the authorisation of the Junta de Andalucía, on 40,000 square metres of unprotected land. These criticisms were also echoed by the opposition CA party at Almuñécar-La Herradura town hall.

CA, the party led by Juan Carlos Benavides, accused the government team of authorising the felling and construction of the building, despite permission being granted by the regional government and not by the town hall. The government team said it “regretted the cynicism of the ex-mayor” over the recent controversy, but “regrets even more that it has to face the bill” for the 2005 urban development agreement which was granted permission by Benavides at the time.

"Nobody likes trees being cut down, but the authorisation is not our responsibility. However, the authorisation for the construction of a housing development came from a town council led by Benavides and for which this town will now have to pay more than 100,000 euros,” said Ruiz Joya. The deputy mayor claims that the town council has had to deal with more than thirty unfulfilled urban development agreements for which he claims it will have to pay out millions of euros.