EST 2005
21st - 27th July 2017
PHOTO CREDIT: GUARDIA CIVIL
Off the hook
RETURNED: The snatched statue.
Statue swindler THE Guardia Civil has arrested a 31-year-old man, known only as SM, for the robbery of a bronze statue in La Ecareda, Almeria. Officers were called by the owner of a farm in La Ecareda after he noticed that a 1.9 metre high ballerina statue had gone missing from his property. The victim spotted the accused fleeing the area after another neighbour had caught him dragging a second statue along the street. Investigators tracked the crook to his home in Vicar and found the statue in question abandoned in his front garden. The accused has been handed over to the Almeria courts under robbery charges.
ALMOST 100 homes built illegally in the La Aljambra neighbourhood of Albox between 2004 and 2006 are not to be demolished. The decision by an Almeria judge to dismiss a petition to have the 98 houses bulldozed has ended a decade of despair for families, including many British expatriates, and is a major victor y for the AUAN (Abusos Urbanisticos Almanzora No) Association. According to a court report, two primary factors influenced the decision, firstly the fact that the buildings had been purchased in good faith by “bona fide third parties, mostly people of British ori-
ALBOX HOMES: Will now not be demolished.
gin and of old age.” Second, there remains the “possibility of legalis-
ing” the houses “according to the measures that Albox Council is taking.”
The town hall has been working on regulating the homes for several years, actively participating in amendments to the Law of Urban Planning in Andalucia, part of which now allows the splitting of a single plot into two or more, as has occurred in La Aljambra. A housing developer with initials JFAH was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence after admitting his part in the scam which involved building the homes on land classified as ‘non-urbanisable’ and without the mandatory building permit. He is also banned from working in the construction trade for two-and-a-half years.