The beach is public plus 106 metres gap... It's the law.

[Clive]

Like the Greenpeace guy says caution is needed as  countryside protection laws often take a long time to implement and as we have seen are often reversed without warning...

That said this has to be excellent news for the islands..... I see a changing of attitude in the general people now showing more interest and concern for their environment... Still a long way to go but it's progressing...

Clive

[Jill]

Hola

Apparently there was a TV programme about this, last week. You probably all saw it, in which case this may be stale news...

The story is that, according to the telly, some of these tower blocks really are going to be demolished. One, on La Manga, is not even finished. But, of course, that doesn't mean that none of the flats have been sold - on the contrary - so I don't know how the owners will stand financially.

The tower block in question actually fronts right onto the beach. Just near to it is a group of relatively nice terraced houses, one row of which is divided from the sea by nothing more than a promenade. (ie. no beach and no road) It would actually be quite a shame if this lot has to go too, because, to me at any rate, these very small, inoffensively low-key houses are the only ones on the whole of La Manga whose construction should ever have been allowed!

Apparently the programme also featured another local apartment block, just near the canal and the bridge, which seems to be falling into the road and into the sea simultaneously. We watched them build this one. Their excavations flooded. And the road alongside cracked and subsided. Yet still they went ahead. To be honest, I get scared just cycling past this particular building - I always put on a bit of extra speed - 'cos I can't understand why it hasn't fallen yet. (There were three blocks under construction, and they actually had to demolish one because it was unsafe.)

The things that I would most like to see demolished here are a.) The beginnings of the Mar Mayor marina, and b.) A hideous unfinished tower block half way along the strip which was begun in the 70s. The latter has not been demolished because the owners say it would cost more to demolish than the land is worth! As for the marina, apparently it is the Murcian council who are supposed to be demolishing that, their illegal permissions having misled the developer into going ahead. The fact that the Murcian council has not carried out the demolition - which was ordered more than a year ago - is clear demonstration of their antagonism towards the Madrid ruling.

Jill

[Caesar's Grunt]

I've just come across this thread and haven't read every post in its entirety, but I thought I'd elaborate on this :

... The chief function of the wardens on Isla Grosa is to stop people from landing there. In summer they have to turn away hundreds every day, or so I am told. The Madrilenos are said to be the least well informed. They insist that they have the right to land there because "it's a beach, so it's public".

The attitude of the Spanish tourists here is really quite amazing; they literally consider that they have a right to use anything on the beach because "it's public property".
I used to work at a sailing school at the end of La Manga.¹ We kept most of the boats on the beach outside,² and there were often kids playing on them. If we asked the parents to keep their children off, they would get very huffy, stating that anything on the beach is public property. (This is not true, according to the beach inspectors, but people are allowed onto an area of beach which we have a permit to use unless we put a fence up round it.)
Worse still was the channel. We had put out (in compliance with Spanish law) a marked channel, which was for use by any boats wishing to access the beach. Not just our own boats; anyone's. It is (under Spanish law and the COLREGs) illegal to obstruct such a channel - but of course, none of the Spanish tourists with their motor boats know or care about that. They have the attitude that because they are rich enough to buy a fancy motor boat they are incredibly important. A large part of my job was to keep the channel - and the strip of beach where it reached the shore - clear of boats, and whilst most people would actually move their boats in the end I had to to a lot of persuading. They couldn't understand at all that the channel was for everyone's use in approaching the beach, or that had boats like theirs been moored all along it when they arrived they wouldn't even have been able to get to the beach. So far as they were concerned if, as I told them, the channel was for public use, they had every right to leave their boat in the middle of it.
People also used to use our moorings and then refuse to leave them when our boats got back. "It's in the water, so it's public!"

Anyway, I suppose this is a bit offtopic... Sorry! 


Caesar




¹ Incidentally, the sailing school has now closed down because the new rascacielos block all the wind. When the school was set up 25 years ago, there were no other buildings within several kilometres.
² When the original owner, a German, arrived here he bought a small piece of land, on which he built the sailing school, and the beach. 10 years ago (I believe after a change in the law) the costas authority came along and told him he was no longer allowed to own the beach. He then had to pay for a license to put his sombrillas on the beach outside his newly-opened restaurant, and the new owner of the sailing school had to pay to put his boats on the beach.

[Jill]

Hi there

I thought that you might be interested in seeing some pictures of the beach on our part of La Manga. The sunshiney shots were taken back in August, and the wintry ones were taken today.

Photos labelled N show the view to the north, along the strip.
Those labelled S show the view from approximately the same place, looking south.

The sunshiney ones show the beach as it usually looks - or has looked, until this past week. Winter or summer, it is usually about the width that these sunshiney photos show. (Can't see the beach for sun-soaked bodies? This is nothing; wait until I show you some snaps of the beach at Benidorm!)

[Jill]

PART TWO

When the wind is onshore the sea throws up dead, brown pieces of Posidonia, the seagrass which is so important to the ecology of the Med. After it has lain on the beach for a while the dead seagrass begins to stink. If you drive along La Manga at these times you will believe that the sewage pipe has burst.

Naturally enough, the locals don't like the seaweed, and they complain to the council. During our first winter here the council used to send a bulldozer along, about once a fortnight, to clear up the weed. They still clear it up during the summer - if they didn't, nobody would come here! - but they have finally realised that removing the weed is actually a bad idea. It's more than a bad idea; it's a disaster. The weed is vitally imortant in protecting the beach from the depridations of the winter storms.

The bank of weed in this photo was eventually about waist high, and it held the force of the waves from attacking the beach. But this photo was taken about a fortnight ago, when the sealevel was as low as we have ever seen it here.

The winter storms are eventually able to breach the weed wall. The weed is then dispersed over the beach and the sand is laid down over the top. This makes for a very spongy beach...! But after a while the sand and the weed are packed down, with the weed evidently helping to bind things together. Eventually, if the sea were to recede, the sand and the rotting Posidonia would make a fertile soil.

[Jill]

PART THREE

But, of course, the sea is not receding. And after the lowest sea-levels for the past three years we are now experiencing the highest. The sea did not spread the weed wall over the beach; it simply stole it away. These photos were taken AFTER the storm. During the storm the sea was breaking up onto the promenade.

Nothing unusual in a sea breaking onto and over a prom. It happens every winter in Brighton and Bognor. But in those places the prom is protected by tons of shingle. And the buildings stand on the far side of the road.

Photo N corresponds to the sunshiney one above. The concrete pedestals mark the sewage pipe. Working underwater with concrete is a tedious business (requiring pumps and a waterproof dam) and so I would assume that the pedestals were built (40 years ago) at the upper limit of the beach. In other words, they probably mark the edge of the La Manga strip as it was in c. 1965.

Photo S corresponds to sunshiney S, above.
Note the spit of rocks. (The tip of the spit is visible in the sunshiney S.)
Object in the foreground is a fish farm pen washed ashore in the gale.

Third photo shows a young naturalist commanding the seas to retreat.

[Jill]

PART FOUR

Back to the main subject: construction of tower blocks etc on the very margin of the beach.

First photo shows the way the beach has been cut away in the past week

Second shows the same piece of erosion and makes clear the proximity of the new tower blocks. These are the ones which featured on the telly, with the road subsiding on their other side.
There are two more blocks, still wrapped in scaffolding, just out of the picture. Their garages are below sealevel.

WHY DOES ANYBODY BUY INTO THESE PROJECTS !? It seems to me that it is 50 percent grab-it-while-you-can-(and-hope-to-leave-the-next-fellow-holding-the-hot-potato) and 50 percent mass credulity. People are far too inclined to disbelieve their own intelligence; "Everybody else is doing it," they say to themselves, "So it must be okay."

If you know anybody who is thinking of buying a flat in La Manga, please do them a favour: show them these photos!

[Jill]

PART FIVE

Concerning Clive's original comment, about the legality of building near the beach.

Photo 1 shows a house which, if the trend continues, will soon be sitting in the middle of the beach. Already the sand meets it on three sides, and a drift often builds up on the landward side. But was it illegally built, or has the beach encroached across the margin?
Significantly, the newly built prom is heading to pass round the back of the house!

Photo 2 shows a house whose construction was begun in April(ish). The house is visible on the far left of the very first photo.
The east side of the house looks across Playa Mayor (= the Mediterranean beach). Although you cannot see it, the road pases between the west face of the house and the Mar Menor. I can easily see why somebody would want to live here (albeit not in such a hideous abode), but if you are right, Clive, it is illegally close to both beaches. Perhaps that's why construction has been halted.

I hope that wasn't too boring!
Jill

[Clive]

Wow Jill, I am impressed! You managed not only to prep some images for web use but also stayed online long enough to upload the images...

Louder than words those images are... And that is a fact....

I would like to know the name of the person who contracted to build the house in your last picture... I will give them two weeks in the Sierra de Grazalema for free with one condition... I will be constantly pointing at them and laughing...

And seriously, a very well observed photo journal there....

Clive

[Caesar's Grunt]

I would like to know the name of the person who contracted to build the house in your last picture... I will give them two weeks in the Sierra de Grazalema for free with one condition... I will be constantly pointing at them and laughing...

That's nothing! The house isn't acually quite as close to the sea as it looks - although the beach does reach practically up to its garden wall. There are plenty of other buildings around here which are much closer to the water...
One interesting thing is that all of the tower blocks, which stand on ground only a couple of meters at most above the sea level, have underground garages below them - which they manage to keep (nearly) dry!
One group of tower-blocks which they are building near us is on extra-low ground and very near the sea. Apparently the TV programme mentioned earlier said they will be the first ones to fall down due to rising sea levels. I think they will fall down soon anyway, actually. They've already had to take down one whole block because they used such a bad mix of concrete... When they dug the hole for the garages (which they spent at least a week pumping dry) all the land around started encroaching, the road just outside their plot subsided, and the canal bridge 200m away is starting to fall down too...

Wow Jill, I am impressed! You managed not only to prep some images for web use but also stayed online long enough to upload the images...

I uploaded them for her! And you prepared them for her... 

[Clive]

I uploaded them for her! And you prepared them for her...  Evil

Ahh Caesar... Don't burst ya mums bubble...

[lisa]

That's amazing Jill. Two things occur to me;
1, looks like the government won't have to bother with knocking these down. Wish I'd seen the programme but hardly watch any tele.
2, no wonder Roxanne has taken to studying life on the ground.

[nick]

Many thanks for this Jill.

I shall endevour to read all of this soon.

[Clive]

Well the demolition of illegal houses seems to have started in Andalucia at least,

The Olive Press is reporting the first houses demolished and hundreds more on the "to do" list.
http://www.theolivepress.es/2008/01/17/going-going-gone/

Finally, the House of Malagas favourite son (Señor Banderos) is also going to be pulled down which for me is very good news. I have the theory that this very wealthy guy and his equally wealthy wife could have set an example by doing a deal with the local council to give them a plot on legally build-able land. They then should have paid with their own money to have their house demolished thus setting an example to all other...

Instead they fought for years to save a house built on protected dunes and virtually in the sea.... With the argument that the sales agent "never told them"

Clive

[Technopat]

Greetings Clive,
Thanx for that update - it brought me back to an interesting thread that I'd overlooked and therefore not noticed Jill's great contributions. Sorry for not paying attention, Jill!
Regs.,
Technopat
PS.
Off to check up on that beach hotel near Mojácar, if I can get the search function to find it for me...

[Spanish Footsteps]

Hola

Another good reason for the 106m gap

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7197379.stm

alfredo

[Technopat]

Greetings alfredo,
Thanx for that En. version - not bad for a Full Member, but we Full 'Shroomies are prescient  and while the rest of you iberianatureforumers are getting yer forty winks, some of us are on watch:
http://www.iberianatureforum.com/index.php/topic,150.msg9491.html#msg9491

Keep up the good work!

Shall-watch-your-future-progress-with-interest regs.,
Technopat 

[Clive]

And, its happening all over...

http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/overseas/article3168519.ece

http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/overseas/article3168472.ece

The comments on these articles are interesting to say the least

[lisa]

Today I shall be mostly going to a demonstration against the illegal construction of houses in the Oyambre Natural Park here on the Cantabrian coast, so I was wondering if anything has been demolished yet in La Manga?

[Technopat]

Greetings All,
Hot off Jesús' website (in pdf):
http://www.indalodeoz.com/Contenidos/1_Estampasindalianas/2004/2004_images/MACENAS.pdf

The photos are explicit enough in themselves, but for those of you whose Spanish is a bit shaky, I thought you might appreciate a rough translation:

"This is the normal aspect of the terrain next to the Cabo de Gata Nature Reserve in the direction of the Levant, in what was until recently, the virgin lands of Mojácar, the hills of which are today being razed, blow by blow.

But the eyes of the speculators only see how cheap the land is here and how easy it is to destroy everything, without even having to get permission.

Macenas Beach: the works have commenced, and what was until recently one of the last built-up areas of the Mediterranean Coast will be lost forever, all in the name of leisure, luxury and progress ... the defiling of our natural heritage in the interests of unsustainable tourism.

The hillsides have started being destroyed... the fauna, the flora, the endemic species (such as the Tortuga mora (Testudo graeca)) are of no importance... neither is the landscape nor the particular tourism that will head for other destinations; non-local companies will get rich at the expense of our heritage, all on behalf of those who have nothing better to do with their filthy lucre.

There’ll be work for all, and the inhabitants of a region historically free and prosperous will find ourselves easily converted into the servants and lackeys of the oh-so upper classes that will arrive... we’ll clean the chalets of the golf players, and weed their gardens...

The worst thing is that everyone keeps quiet and holds out their hands... and so do we, and so do the authorities...

When all the earth that’s been moved ends up being washed into the sea with the next rainstorm, not only will we have interfered with the ecology of the land in the area but also with the marine ecology, those underwater ecosystems, as beautiful as they are fragile that surround the coast of Almería in general, and Macenas and Mojácar in particular.

Now that there’s nothing left to destroy on rest of the coast, the era of pharaonic destruction has reached Almería. This photograph, taken from the road that borders the beach, shows the scale of the levelling being carried out to make room for the private golf courses, both elitist and unsustainable.

By the way, where do they think they will get all the water from in these arid lands? Do they really expect there to be a second Plan Hidrológico Nacional to bring the water from the highlands of Iberia down here to the South where we don’t even want it?

Such is the present and the future of our land in Almería... so many centuries of history, so much blood shed by our ancestors to defend their territory and their culture and now, in the name of the Goddess Modernity and her lover, the God of Leisure, in one fell swoop, they take away our heritage. All to benefit a few and well-known pockets.

The War of the Titans is being fought on lands full of history and biodiversity... the last Iberian bastions of the Tortuga mora (Testudo graeca) in its wild state... but as nobody is interested, and everyone keeps quiet about it, the War of the Titans has commenced.

This is the final result of the the activity being carried out by the machinery: the destruction of Nature and the construction of cement and concrete... wipe out the autochthonous species to bring in foreign species to the private parks and gardens, all totally lacking in any social benefit to the local population.

Don’t let Macenas die:
If you have any useful information which may help to detain this atrocity, please don’t hesitate to contact us at any of the following email addresses:

PLEASE HELP US TO DISSEMINATE DETAILS OF THIS AWFUL SITUATION"

The photos and text are from 2004 and the works are now well advanced (nearing completion?). Maybe Jesús could post more recent photos.

Sad regards,
Technopat

(I took the background of quote away so Tp's translation could be more easily read... Admin)