Spain again

If any simple comparison can be made of the life of the average citizen in Britain and Spain, I would say that in Britain people live their lives through the Government, while in Spain they get on with things in spite of it. Many, many years of dealing with incompetent government, coupled perhaps with a natural anarchistic streak, have led to a society that is remarkably willing to get things done sensibly and practically at the level of personal co-operation, and then sort out the boring details afterwards.

Yesterday I wrote of the problems of corruption that have come inevitably with Spain’s property boom, but today this appeared in El País (here). It sheds a rather different light on the matter.

“We’ll see which judge dares to knock this down”

500 families live in three housing developments built on rural land in Mejorada

NATALIA JUNQUERA - Madrid,
EL PAÍS - Spain - 14-11-2006

The agents of the Guardia Civil’s Nature Protection Service (Seprona) point to three housing developments in Mejorada del Campo (Villaflores, Balcón de Mejorada and El Tallar) as the paradigm of illegal building. “They start with a little shed for tools then a chalet goes up bedside it, and when they see that nothing is done, they go for a swimming pool,” says one of the officers. The three are built on rural land, without planning permission and without the supervision of the College of Architects. There are 500 houses, nearly 2,000 residents. Some have been living there for twenty years.

The entrance to this illegal town is called calle Paraíso (Paradise Street). It was the residents themselves who decided what names to give their streets or earth paths that separate long rows of dwellings. These meet all tastes depending on then likings of their inhabitants: with pool, with garden, with vegetables and fruit trees, with a henhouse, with honeycombs with bees, and even with housing for falcons. There are chalets of classic design and other bolder ones, with their own domes, stone horses at the entrance and up to three storeys high. In exchange for all these architectural whims, the residents wage a daily battle with the discomfort to be found in an illegal development: they have no electricity supply, or water, or refuse collection service, or…

Letter boxes where the Spanish Post Office delivers the mail

With water they have tried pretty well everything: contracting a tanker lorry to deliver it house by house; stealing it from the Compañía Logística de Hidrocarburos (CLH) and buying it later at an agreed price; stealing it from the Isabel II Canal and starting to pay for it after reaching a provisional contract with the supply company after a sit-in in the Town Hall as a protest and paying the accumulated debt: 130,000 euros.

With electricity, just the same. Some chalets have solar panels. At one time the residents bought themselves 100 street lamps and hooked themselves up to Fenosa now they have petrol generators that have to be changed every 12 hours, for which reason one of the dwellings that are being built is for the man newly in charge of maintenance. “We give it to him almost free, 1,200 euros a month as pay [almost certainly in cash - PH], with insurance, for him to be available. He’s a Hungarian immigrant and he’s delighted!" says Miguel Ángel Martínez, one of the longest-standing inhabitants of El Tallar.

It took the Seprona of the Community of Madrid more than two months to fill in hundreds of pages on these three illegal developments. The case has been awaiting resolution in the courts of Coslada (Madrid) since March 2005. “We corroborate the offence, make the statement, and send it to the judge. That’s the end of our work. We can’t do any more and we’ll see which judge dares to knock down the homes of 500 families,” says one of the Seprona officers regretfully.

The residents are also aware that their only strong point is demographic pressure. ”I was one of the first. When I built my house I was gambling, I was risking them pulling it down because I was alone but now there are a lot of us and we are much better covered. I get very pleased when is see that there are new people living here,” says Miguel Ángel Martínez. He bought his 2,500 square metre plot for 500,000 pesetas (3,000 euros) 23 years ago. He found out that the land that he had bought was rural with no permission for building when a Madrid court gave a six-month prison sentence to the developer who had promised that he could build his chalet there. “I waited a bit and then I saw that no-one was doing anything to sort the matter out, I sold my flat and put up my house here,” he explains.

One of his neighbours is Cristina Carrascosa, a PP [Conservative] Councillor in Mejorada Council. "She came a few years ago but she’s not moving because of the legalisation. The council don’t give us any kind of service but we pay the IBI [property tax],” Miguel Ángel says. The first residents came more than 20 years ago and the latest are building their chalets on the pieces of land that their parents have let them have in view of the difficulty of moving out legally, which is more expensive. “Over there they’re selling chalets for 420,000 euros. Here you can put up a house for 600 euros a square metre. You only pay for the materials and labour,” he adds.

“It’s getting increasingly complicated because they work with a policy of faits accomplis. We must put a stop to this undisciplined development. At the last meeting we decided that the best thing was to include them in the next General Plan,” explains Fernando Peñaranda, Mayor of Mejorada (PSOE [Socialist]). The principal obstacle to the legalisation is the solid waste tip at Rendija II. “Building is not allowed within two kilometres, and it’s just who goes first, the tip people or them,” Peñaranda adds.

Mejorada del Campo, 20 km from Madrid, is the place where Justo Gallego Martínez is building his very own cathedral – with no planning permission or architectural approval (more information in English with photos here).