Could the nightmare of illegal homes be almost over for the residents of Lliber in Spain?

OWNERS of illegal properties in the Valencian town of Lliber are cautiously optimistic that their decades-long battle to regularize their homes may finally be reaching a positive outcome.

On the day a meeting was held last week in the municipality to provide information to residents about a regional scheme that can legalize the nearly 300 irregular properties there, the local council promised to grant new licenses called MIT.

“Last week’s meeting was the best I’ve been to with the mayor present in 22 years,” Adrian Hobbs, president of the Abuses Urbanisticos Lliber No (AULN) campaign association, told The Olive Press. ‘But you’re not seeing me dancing like a crazy maniac with happiness, because I’ve been here before,’ he warned.

In 2019, the left-wing regional government approved the LOTUP law, which entailed both the creation of the Valencian Agency for Territorial Protection (AVPT) and the MIT licenses, aimed at solving the problem of houses built on rustic land without the proper license and which they have since been left in legal limbo.

Funding is available for municipalities to address this issue, but the regional government’s own figures suggest that uptake has been very low so far, with only 26 out of 542 municipalities applying for funding, leaving over 95% of the town halls yet to be launched. in a request

The regularization of these illegal houses built on land in the green belt can be achieved through the so-called Territorial Impact Minimization Licenses (MIT). These legalize the property in question in exchange for a guarantee that the impact of environmental factors such as sewage disposal and potential hazards such as fires in the surroundings are minimized.

John Kirby, a former municipal architect who has lived in Spain for 28 years, has been commissioned by the region to get the message out to the victims of this situation about how the new system works.

faulty system

“The tradition was that there was a piece of land and someone would build something,” he explains. ‘Nothing would happen if it wasn’t extravagant. That went on for years. The problem started in the last decades when these properties were sold to foreigners.’

Virtually all of these buyers thought they were buying something legal because the house was listed in the land registry. But a flaw in the Spanish system meant that illegal buildings could be bought and sold, but then couldn’t be legally occupied or even maintained. The future of your property was doomed to destruction and natural ruin, or voluntary demolition.

The lack of an occupation license for these homes means that you cannot connect public services, you cannot register in the municipal register and, consequently, you cannot access public services or vote in local elections.

Kirby estimates that there are 194,000 of these illegal properties in the Valencia region alone.

“We estimate that of all those hundreds of thousands of properties, fewer than 2,000 need to be torn down. If the municipalities play ball, the other 192,000 can be legalized, he says.

But as the residents of Lliber, in the province of Alicante, have been able to verify, there has been resistance. The city is home to one of the most famous cases of illegal property, with some 292 such houses built some 20 years ago. The buyers were convinced they were buying something legal, but all the licenses turned out to be irregular.

Criminal case

The case ended up in court in 2009, with members of the local Popular Party council, including the current mayor, implicated. This criminal case is still ongoing, and experts believe the board has been holding off on MIT licenses while it awaits a ruling.

Adrian Hobbs is one of the owners of Lliber.

‘When we got ready to move we said, where is the paperwork?’ he explains. “They have told us that there has been a small problem, but don’t worry, everything takes a long time in Spain. Four years later, we started to get mad. And when we started digging, things started to come to light.

The members of the victims’ association spent between 250,000 and 1.5 million euros on their properties and ran out of paper.

The clock is ticking, and many of the victims, who hail not only from the UK but also from the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Spain, are now in a different phase of their lives.

“Before, people made retirement plans,” Hobbs explains. ‘Now these people are eighty or almost eighty years old and they want to go back to their homeland. They are making end-of-life plans. They go to sell and realize that their paperwork is still not in order.’

The numbers have also decreased due to deaths, but this simply means that the problems become the responsibility of the heirs of the properties.

positive spin

The association is scheduled to meet with the council on Friday. The mayor of Lliber, Jose Juan Reus, has put a positive spin on the situation in conversation with The Olive Press. All residents have to do is apply for licenses, he said, adding that the “process will be quick.”

“No one has a greater interest than me in seeing the situation resolved,” he said.

Hobbs, meanwhile, remains skeptical. “I’ll tell you in three weeks if that line is met,” he said of the mayor’s promises.

At least the AULN president is capable of looking at the situation with a typically British sense of humour. “If I don’t pick up the phone next week it’s because I’m dead,” he joked.

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