Spanish Extremadura: Holiday complex threatened with wrecking ball

A legal dispute over an exclusive residential complex in Spain’s Extremadura has been raging for 15 years. Now the Supreme Court has confirmed: The settlement was built illegally in a nature reserve – so it has to go.

If you want to visit the Marina de Valdecañas, you first have to pass a sentry box with a barrier. Then there is the golf course, the pretty single-family homes, the four-star hotel. The upscale leisure resort is a 140 million project. It was built in the mid-nineties, when Spain had long since said goodbye to the concrete castles of the 1970s and 1980s. A few ocher cubes spread out discreetly over 133 hectares – that’s it. The peninsula lies in a large reservoir and from above you can hardly tell that it is built on. But it happens to be in a nature and bird sanctuary, and that’s why it has to be demolished. That’s what Spain’s Supreme Court decided — the last word for the time being in a tough judicial marathon.

“There was nothing here”

On a rainy Saturday, the owners invite you to a crisis meeting in the hotel’s lounge. Most are well-off Madrilenians who have paid more than half a million euros for their weekend homes and now no longer understand the world. One finds the situation “Kafkaesk”; the court must have made a mistake. The hall is full, people from the surrounding area have also come, just as stunned as the homeowners.

Silvia Sarro goes to the microphone, she is the mayor of the neighboring village of El Gordo. “I grew up here,” she says, “I’ve known this place for decades. There was nothing here, just a small eucalyptus grove, and next to it the people from the area dumped their garbage, that’s it.” Now the area is much nicer, says Sarro. And more than 200 people would have found work here – on the golf course, in the gardens and in the hotel.

Investment thanks to property tax

200 jobs – that’s a lot in Extremadura, one of the economically weakest regions of Spain. Unemployment here is almost 20 percent, and one in three lives below the poverty line. El Gordo, about a two-hour drive southwest of Madrid, used to have almost 2,000 residents – now there are only 400. “The people from Madrid saved us,” says Silvia Sarro.

Not only have they brought jobs, but also property taxes. Hundreds of thousands of euros more for the municipal treasury, which they used to build a retirement home, a day care center and a swimming pool. “If they had to demolish the Marina de Valdecañas, that would be the death of our village. Everyone is always talking about wanting to help rural Spain. And then a site that is supposedly worthy of protection is more important than the people!”

The lawsuit has left its mark

The idyll is still there, but the traces of years of litigation cannot be overlooked. Only parts of the shell of a planned second hotel remain, and at the edge of the golf course bare steel girders reach into the sky. More houses should have been built here. The project developers originally wanted to build more than 500 – only 185 were completed. Because even before the last judgment, the demolition judgment, there was a construction freeze. The investors had come to terms with that, believing that what was already there should at least stay put.

It comes as a shock to her that everything has to be dismantled down to the last brick. Because after the start of construction, the regional government had specifically changed the basic and land law in order to legalize projects such as the Marina de Valdecañas. Everything seemed watertight, and there were apparently no doubts about this procedure.

Environmentalists see themselves confirmed

Julio César thinks that everyone should have known better. His organization “Ecologistas en Acción” has sued the Marina de Valdecañas, which probably makes him one of the most unpopular people in the county. But that doesn’t bother him. From his lips, the history of the settlement sounds like a picaresque novel: what didn’t fit, the regional government simply made fit by changing the law.

But it should have been clear to everyone that this is not so easy in a nature reserve where birds breed. “It’s setting a precedent now. If, despite all the verdicts and all the expert opinions, you don’t tear it down and leave it as it is – according to the motto: now it’s already there – then the signal is: You can do it in Spain, what you want.”

Demolition just as expensive as construction

The demolition order has startled investors across Spain, and not just them. Because if the peninsula is really to be restored to the state it was in before construction began, then it’s not just the buildings that have to go. Then the entire infrastructure is ripped out of the ground and dismantled: the electrical boxes, sewers, roads and lampposts. The regional government, which had approved everything, would be responsible for this. It is hardly surprising that she wants to fight to the last instance to prevent the demolition. She hopes Spain’s constitutional court will come to terms – she believes the dismantling would cause far greater environmental damage than the construction ever did.

In fact, money might also play a role. The cost of a demolition of this magnitude is estimated at 40 million euros, plus 100 million to compensate the owners. The end of the settlement would be almost as expensive as building it. If it really comes to that – it would be a first-class funeral that the Spanish taxpayers would have to donate to the Marina de Valdecañas.