Residents of the Banana Beach building in Marbella who are facing the demolition of their homes because they have been built on a green zone finally have some form of possible legal defence.

This is known in Spain as the principle of ‘public faith in the registry’. Some legal experts consider that this principle establishes that the person who purchases a home believing the data on it in the local registry, must be allowed to keep ownership.

The dean of the College of Registrars for Property in Western Andalucía, Manuel Martín, has also commented that the mortgage law in Spain protects the rights of proprietors who buy property in good faith, based on the information contained in the public registry at the time. It would also mean that a building could only be knocked down unless all the individual owners were denounced, and that it could be proved that they knew that the licence granted for the building was null.
He thought therefore that demolition of occupied homes was unlikely.

Other experts have also said that such demolitions if ordered would take years to be finalised as the legal challenges from the owners would have to pass through the courts. Then the local town hall and the promoters would face massive compensation claims.

The threatened Banana Beach building in Marbella - Photo EFE

The PP leader in Andalucía, Javier Arenas, has commented that the demolition of the illegal homes in Marbella would be ‘absolutely immoral’.
‘Under no concept will I allow the residents of good faith who have purchased a home, pay for the disasters of the Junta and the GIL governments’, he said.

The Andalucian Supreme Court of Justice has meanwhile confirmed that it will take statements from the owners of the threatened buildings before deciding on future demolitions.

Earlier however, several people commented that they thought demolition of the illegal homes should be carried out:

The President of the Marbella Management Committee, Diego Martin Reyes, has said he is worried about the situation, but that he was convinced that the firm sentence from the Andalucian Supreme Court ordering demolition should be carried out. He said that it was not a problem exclusive to Marbella, but that there were more than 400 challenged licences in the town awaiting final sentence.

The Andalucian Ombudsman, José Chamizo, has also supported the demolition of 334 homes in a total of seven developments in Marbella whose licences were annulled by the Andalucian Supreme Court. He said that what justice ordered had to be carried out, however lamentable it was for the owners of the buildings. He said each owner should be looked at on an individual basis to see if they had been tricked into making the purchase, adding that the judiciary should study the alternatives and take the rights of the owners into account.

The regional government delegate in Cádiz, José Antonio Gómez Periñán, has also come out in favour of demolition. His interests are the Montenmedio and Las Beatillas cases in his province, but he said that the Junta’s town planning policy would not be credible unless illegal buildings were demolished.

The Spanish Association of Technical Architects has also issued a statement saying that the illegal homes should be demolished, provided that measures are taken to limit what they call the ‘social effect’ of the measure.