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Is
Land Ownership in Spain Truly Freehold?
By Tom
Clancy
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..March
2006
| I was disturbed
to read your report
on land abuse when I am about to buy some suelo rustico in another
region and close to the coast (always the most desirable overall development
region). I have mixed feelings about the ultimate cause as opposed to responsibility
for this situation. A country which is attractive owing to its lack of
rat race high rise development has been targeted by opportunists to attract
hundred of thousands of people to it by building these higher class slums.
I travelled to Spain again in 2004
and saw these inappropriate, giant buildings scarring what was a once peaceful
landscape. I saw a recent TV production on the building of a huge home
in Malaga.
Whilst it turned out to be quite
stunning, on the way the architect was uncomplimentary about the local's
attempts to have it painted their uniform colour code. He, the Brit, was
going to have his way and bulldozed onwards.
He was a lightweight example of the
arrogance that we bring with us as we "blend" facetiously and patronisingly
into our new surrounding which is very often self deluding racism and class
consciousness.
We always know better than these
paysans...Our neighbours may even "find us delightful" and we find them
"charming”. We write books like "A Year in Provence" as thinly disguised
indications of "what we have to put up-with" when dropping into someone
else's culture through personal choice.
TV shows are produced showing embarrassing
scenes, if one has any sensitivity... like self assured British chefs purported
to be "experts" in some cuisine or another, along with their usually catty
wives and horrid kids, cooking for the local village as though bringing
the pancake to the Hottentots. Polite clapping is encouraged of the locals.
Australian companies buy into wine
production in France and elsewhere in Europe "to show the locals how to
really make wine" We "Anglo Saxons" (a most inaccurate terminology I know)
are a culture of an unfortunate essence of "our experience is the one to
prevail" and this is the ugliness of the recent migrations into France
and Spain and other parts of Europe in which the culture is regarded as
quaint and intriguing but ultimately "third world".
Thus we are loathed whilst we are
welcome because of cash flow. We are also quite amusing as we restore their
ruins.
Sometimes we are simply nice people
who are welcomed in one village and loathed in the next. As the impact
bites home and locals start to see their way of life altering and they
become less powerful and costs bases are escalating a more festering resistance
starts.
Though these "third world" characters
are used to an element of obvious totalitarianism it was after all , THEIR
totalitarianism and not something accompanied by a non military foreign
invasion pulling financial howitzers and firing blasts of cash at the impoverished
and having another rank of bankers catching the dislodged local cash as
it rains down.
Ultimately all its eventual good
and bad points emerge. At least you can kill the other military invaders
whereas to do it to real property agents and developers is considered to
be "not the go, old chap”. “Development" and immigration is the slippery
equivalent of the Napoleonic war....some good emerges from a holocaust.
Developers, and I have some experience
in the area, are in my view a well insulated breed. They offer hedonism
and opportunity which overcomes any sympathy for the local yokels. Consideration
of the impact of our presence in other countries has never been an "Anglo
Saxon" concern..."they ought to be pleased to have us here"!
Having said all that opportunists
seek power and mayors and councillors are examples of it whatever their
initial motivations. These are privileged positions both in information
gathering, being lobbied, having your ego rubbed and being presented with
opportunity.
It isn't difficult to have a mayor
or a councillor show his importance through the impact of attracting Capital
to his domain.
Often these people's management heads
are paid on the basis of "per capita" and support development and increases
in population. "Western" developers know this and use the appropriate
techniques.
Suggesting a mayor or councillor
or local businessman of influence works to rezone land he partly owns,
offering him or his siblings or wife a free or to avoid corruption charges
a "cost price" unit on the "never never" or suggesting well in advance
that person "might find it advantageous to buy some land in a particular
area, even offering a piece of it at a bargain rate all of which even these
purportedly parochial influentials quickly realise it will benefit him
to be seen as "the smart one".. is an old old technique which rarely fails.
So in a way we are carrying our own
crucifix to the Mt. of Spanish Olives...to mix biblical events. What we
came to enjoy we are exterminating. In that process we are finding we can
also suffer because of the four apocalyptical horsemen, now commercially
astute, we bring with us.
All that said the EEU system is one's
only salvation because like the UK, all the people in the EEU want to do
their own thing as much as possible whilst reaping the benefits. In the
UK case it deplores the French influence and requires a privileged position
and so is quite content to have a silent, voter, invasion of other EEU
countries while it sits on the sidelines, partly committed.
In other cases the country is simply
resistant under its layers of EEU formal robes. France for example was
to be fully sewered by 2000 conditional in its EEU entry commitments but
the house I bought in 1999 had a "mincerateur" then and still has one!
The local sewage hasn't made it that extra 2Kms!.
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Article
Continued Below - |
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Article
Continued From Above -
Those above are some of the wheels
within wheels affecting concepts like land grabs. These matters are not
unrepresented by events abroad which can show the way to deal with things.
It was in living memory that Australian Governments were required not just
to compensate but to JUSTLY compensate people for land, but it took a lot
of effort to have this done in the wonderful land of equality!!..OZ....
The usual concept is that the equivalent of the crown, the local state
controller holds ultimate rights to the land, or it may be the emperor
or despot.
To shift that entity into making
a lesser profit through providing compensation is a well resisted exercise.
You are facing it now. There are points not clearly enunciated in the article
which do need to be not just "realised" but enunciated. One has to discover
first who has the ultimate right to the land and work on them. There is
no point in spending resources fighting a mayor who is only rezoning if
the ultimate target is elsewhere. Taking land without justification or
at worst, adequate compensation, is an undeniable breach of human
rights and perhaps of the theory of freehold land ownership but,..hey what
human rights existed in Spain in 1938..or even later?
Is land ownership in Spain truly
freehold?...an important point.
Are land acquisition regulations
for emergency purposes being misused in peacetime? An example is the Commonwealth
bank in Australia resuming property on the basis of being "insulated because
of its "commonwealth" status"...something my poor and desperate but extremely
intelligent father realised was a load of "old cods" and won a case of
eviction through it.
It is essential to learn the points
of "limpeting" of land law in any environment, whether regulations are
misused, inappropriate or non existent and to attack them. Sometimes public
demonstrations and lobbying locals to see your point of view, build bridges
, is a big step forward. "Winning the hearts and minds" is something not
only a developer's domain...but the locals getting seemingly free benefits
merely through disadvantaging the rich immigrant needs quite a powerful
moral argument to overcome and one means is by a simultaneous disadvantaging
of some locals as well...enough disadvantage that the perverse "this would
never have happened to me if they had not come here" cannot actually end
up working against you. At the end of the day being popular additions to
the community will be your greatest advantage. Even "third world" cultures
understand loyalty and fair play.
In our self preening, introspective
"Anglo Saxon" way we make films about the paysan thrust into power that
becomes despotic and now as you can see, it is no laughing matter.
Taking land for "open space" or "public
use" doesn't mean it should not be compensated. developers on a larger
scale can build that into their net costs and pass it on in one form or
another. Smaller holders do not have that degree of communication and negotiation
where the establishment will overlook one thing if suitable excuse
can be manufactured "we are giving you a park"..
As a young man I was told by the
local council in Australia I would have to donate land as a park ...I said
"my place is surrounded by a thousand square miles of open space, bush
land and parks ..go to blazes" and since then the blackmail of being compelled
adding valuable land to the local register so as to be allowed to develop
one's land is not so rigid.
On the other hand when large scale
developers make places for thousand to come to a small plot of land by
vertical "strata" then I agree wholeheartedly that they must provide a
great deal of recreational facility which does not encumber the other locals.
I might add that in my desperation
of my wife leaving me and the children when I was 26 I felt I had to sell
out and move back to Sydney where "Mum" was. I later found that the local
estate agent acting for me both lied to me on several aspects of its value
and had his sister making low offers as "no one else seemed interested"
in this magnificent acreage. He secretly formed a company with a
developer and bought my land for very little and then subdivided it (without
public space)and thus made a great deal of money...over $100,000 profits
in an era when that was today's $1 million. Today that land developed is
worth about $3M.
It later drove me to become an expert
in property matters...in my country. I then had to become expert in France
through bad experiences through corrupt agents, predominantly English,
and corrupt Notaries in France and now I see Spain is a problem....and
the causes are from the same root.
One has to question, if my land is
being acquired against my will or worse "resumed without appropriate compensation
including moving costs" then what are my undeniable rights, before the
song and dance act starts. I see in your interesting article that the "moving
costs" very conveniently bypassed by allowing you to keep some of the land!...land
which is probably worth much less owing to the monstrosity built alongside
it and the restrictions of development post development of the major part
of the site. Perhaps one has to look at the right to demand total acquisition
when acquisition occurs and to be at a rate which reflects the value of
the land as development land.
If I am the victim of compulsory
acquisition or resumption of my land should I be compelled to have any
of that referred to as "public utility" in the assessment, I am after all,
not a voluntary developer.
If an authority resumes my land for
some purpose, demand that IT provide the open space from its own resources.
Unfortunately because people are antagonistic towards unwanted immigration
it seems perversely "just" to them that these rich immigrants lose something
back to the general good.
If it appears that land belonging
to absentee proprietors is significant in degree of resumption this might
well be a very compelling point in the court even though it will be claimed,
with some perverse reality, that these people are rarely here so the impact
is minimised.
That has to be counteracted with
the essential theory of freehold ownership and the basis that just owning
the land is a daily pleasure, a it would be, though perhaps a little less,
or perhaps a little more, than were the person there on the land.
There is quite a distance between
having the right to resume or compulsorily acquire land and using those
powers and quite a distance perhaps between the latter and using them properly.
People denied their rights are still people who are a part of "the common
good" in whose name such actions occur.
So, putting all that together we
have human forces at work. If the top regional bureaucracy is acting against
the natural human rights then those rights must be contested and where
possible, on advice, that person advised that redress will be taken
personally against him or her to achieve compensation.
Only damages against the party personally
will affect them otherwise at worst they "take responsibility" (which means
admitting guilt but nothing happens)and resign thus insulating themselves
and enjoying the profits...sometimes on going and perhaps joining the development
company as a lobbyist. To know your arsenal you need to know what personal
responsibility is associated with public positions and what redress in
law you can make against them for compensation for their decisions and
under what circumstances.
Another method, slower but sometimes
quite effective as long as the locals see benefits , is to stand as a body
against the mayor and his associates in local elections on the platform
but equally knowing what other things affect people and having plans to
keep them happy elsewhere as well. After all, developers and real property
agents are often found in local councils!
Another method is to have the bureaucracy
legally examined publicly as recently took place here at the Gold Coast
in Queensland, albeit very averagely done in my view....and that was over
development bribes etc!!
You have tried this public scrutiny
through a more distant form in which you hoped power would be exerted only
to find that you were disappointed as the system is geared to NOT change
and the EEU only has power where it has bureaucratic enthusiasm from the
local scene and some real power to swiftly enforce its will or at least
to hold up development until a resolution. The developer's hip pocket is
where his ethics and morality are kept and what is tough for them to swallow
will impact on the largesse offered to the bureaucracy.
I can write on but have things to
do. Its 2am and I am tired and finding it difficult to organise my thoughts.
If anyone is interested perhaps we can examine together the land system
in Spain. In the meantime get individuals to lobby the EEU as well as groups.
....
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