I still travel down to Marbella on a regular basis, it’s not very far away. My former Spanish business partner still operates there, and I usually meet up with my former abogado as well. We always have a good laugh remembering the time I tried to pay the abogado by cheque.
Both agree that the Junta cannot possibly legalise the illegal properties, just about anything built in the last 20 years, even the police station. Central government has done its best, but those old boys in Seville are still in place, and they hate the name Marbella, it has caused them too much trouble in the past, and across the whole of Andalucia there are tens of thousands of illegal properties.
They can hardly start bulldozing fincas in Chiclana and elsewhere and leave the luxury apartment blocks in Marbella in place, those apartments are more illegal than the all the little fincas put together.
Nothing is going to be bulldozed, the Junta don’t have the money, and they don’t have the power to legalise something that is illegal, it would need a change of the law at national level.
