Leaders of the Partido Popular in Marbella and Mijas have responded to the general outcry at the possible demolition of more than 3,000 illegally built houses in both municipalities by meeting to discuss what can be done about the situation. The mayor of Marbella, ángeles Muñoz, and the spokesperson for the Partido Popular in Mijas, ángel Nozal, held a joint press conference last week in Las Lagunas to announce that, from now on, they will be working closely together to prevent the demolition of the houses in question. Both proposed a solution that would use the Master Town Plan to legalise the houses in each municipality by ensuring that the land they were built on is re-zoned.
The Mijas Partido Popular leader also announced that he planned to request that the courts postpone the most immediate demolition orders, which affect all parts of his municipality, arguing that he was responding to the general outcry among the people affected by the planned demolitions. “The situation has changed, even from a judicial point of view, so we have asked the courts to postpone, for the moment, the 300 demolitions orders already issued,” said ángel Nozal.
The two politicians, who will be candidates for the Andalusian parliament in the next regional elections, promised that, if elected, they would change the urban planning policies of the Junta de Andalucía, which they defined as deplorable. Muñoz guaranteed that he would bring about what he described as “a radical change to prevent residents from finding themselves in such an irregular situation.”
A problem in common
“Mijas is very important for Marbella, because what happens in one area has repercussions in the other, and so it is necessary for us to act together when faced with a common problem that is being treated as two separate problems by the Junta de Andalucía,” said ángeles Muñoz.
According to ángel Nozal, while Manuel Chaves (president of the Junta) is being implacable with Marbella because it is governed by the Partido Popular, he looks the other way in the case of Mijas, because it is governed by the PSOE. “He pretends the problem does not exist, telling the people of the place to find their own solutions,” said Nozal. “This is the most serious problem the municipality has faced since the post-war period,” he said.
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