LIFELINE

IT has taken over two decades, but now hundreds of expat-owned homes could finally be legalised in inland Valencia.

A tentative agreement has been struck to allow nearly 300 irregular properties in the Jalon Valley to become legal. Lliber town hall has confirmed that it will grant so-called ‘MIT licences’ to regularise the homes in country- side near the village.

By Simon Hunter

not live under a sword of Damocles that had been threatening demolition since the 1990s.

“The meeting was the best one I’ve been to with the mayor present in 22 years,” Adrian Hobbs, the president of association Abusos Urbanisticos Lliber No (AULN), told the Olive Press, this week.

MIT (Territorial Impact Minimisation) licences. These are aimed at solving the problem of houses built on rural land without initial licences leaving homeowners in a legal limbo ever since.

The problem came about because for decades local Spanish were effectively allowed to build small properties on their land without a licence.

local elections.

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

“Yet from all those thousands of properties, fewer than 2,000 need to be knocked down,” he told the Olive Press this week.

“If the town halls play ball, the other 192,000 can be legalised.”

“I hope to finally have a legal home…But you’re not seeing me dancing around with happiness just yet, because I've been here before,” he added.

The new potential breakthrough comes after the regional government passed the LOTUP law in 2019, setting up the Valencian Agency for Territorial Protection (AVPT), which offered the new

“Nothing would happen unless it waswasn’t outlandish,” explained former decades when these properties were sold to foreigners,” added Kirby, who has been employed by the regional government to liaise with homeowners and town halls.

The main issue is that while buyers thought their homes were legal they didn’t have official occu-

In Lliber, where there are 292 such houses, the issue ended up in the courts in 2009, with members of the PP – including the current mayor – implicated.

Criminal

This criminal case is still going on, with insiders telling the Olive Press they believe the council has been dragging its heels over the MIT licences while it waits for a ruling. The mayor of Lliber, Jose Juan Reus, denied this, insisting all the residents have to do is request a licence, adding the ‘process will be quick’.

“No one has a greater interest to see the situation resolved than I do,” he told the Olive Press this week.

It would mean the owners - who spent up to €1.5m on their homes - could finally move on with their lives and pation licences. This meant they could not be legally occupied or even maintained, nor could the owners get utilities or services, or sign on the padron (municipal roll) and therefore vote in Opinion Page 6

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Police subsequently arrest-