OLIVE PRESS
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Vol. 15 Issue 373
www.theolivepress.es
Your expat
voice in Spain July 14th - July 27th 2021
I’m running things now
Female expat makes moving tribute to her famous bullrunning dad See page 12
Rollercoaster ride for our man getting married on the Rock during Euro final Find out how it went on page 6 By Katherine Brook
NEARLY 40,000 people have signed a petition to allow vaccinated British Expats to visit the UK without quarantining. It comes after dozens of expats expressed outrage at a rule that made them exempt and needing to quarantine on their return to see family or friends back home.
Pragmatic
The digital petition, which claimed the rule prejudiced up to six million Britons living abroad, caused a rapid response from the UK government, defending its ‘pragmatic approach’. A spokesman said: “Public health has always been our number one priority and we will not risk throwing away our hard-won achievements. “We have set out a pragmatic approach, protecting public health while also enabling international travel to restart again.” For the petition to be considered in Parliament it needs to reach 100,000 signatures. See letters special on page 10
Stitch up
Pensioner ‘left with nothing’ after losing home in long legal dispute with builder A BRITISH pensioner has lost her dream home in the sun over a decades-long legal dispute over a boundary wall. Margaret Townley, 75, claims she has been the victim of a miscarriage of justice after being forced to walk away from the house on which she has spent more than €300,000. The former social worker, from Bath, has handed the keys to her neighbour after a vicious 13-year legal battle. She told the Olive Press she believes corruption and fraud has caused the loss of her retirement home in Salobrena, Granada. “I never believed it could reach the point where I have had to empty my house and walk away with nothing, but this is what has happened,” she said. Her nightmare began after she got into a legal battle with her builder neighbour over a dodgy collapsed boundary wall, w h i c h led to a
EXCLUSIVE By Fiona Govan
judge ordering the house to be sold at a closed auction. To add insult to injury it was bought ‘under value’ by the family of the very builder responsible for the collapsed wall. The sorry saga will send shockwaves through the expat community and serve as a warning of the corruption that still exists in Spain.
Foundations
Worse, it points a finger at the judicial system that failed to protect innocent individuals against it. Townley and her Chilean husband Roberto had first purchased their plot above Salobrena on the Costa Tropical in Granada in 2002. Conveniently they hired a local builder, who lived next door, to build the house and a boundary wall at a cost of €18,500 All went well until in 2008 a section of the wall collapsed after a winter ALL AREAS COVERED of heavy rains and it emerged 4G UNLIMITED it had been built without proper INTERNET foundations and IDEAL FOR drainage. STREAMING TV She did what ALSO IPTV, any property owner would do SATELLITE TV and attempted to sue the buildtel: (0034) 952 763 840 er for his shoddy info@theskydoctor.com work. www.theskydoctor.com “We carried out
X
Vaccine fury
SKY + THE DOCTOR +
Tel: 952 147 834
See page 11
TM
DISGRACE: Collapsed wall led to loss of Townley’s house technical surveys which determined that the wall had not been built to the specifications agreed and attempted to seek legal redress for him to replace it or pay compensation,” said Townley. “But we gave up seeing any compensation and when he later died we were told his wife had refused his inheritance as it was only debts that he left her,” she continued. But this didn’t stop the wife from taking out a case against Townley attempting to sue HER for the damage caused to her fruit trees when the wall collapsed. Incredibly, she was successful when Motril court ruled that she was responsible for repairing the wall to avoid further collapses and appointed a technical architect whose report quoted a rebuild cost of €117,000. “It was an absurd and excessive amount and as the ruling didn’t say we had to actually follow that plan we
instead forked out €30,000 on a new wall that was given approval by Salobrena town hall,” said Townley, who believed that was the end of the matter. The case was referred up to the Provincial Court in Granada where a judge ruled that it had no jurisdiction as it was not a criminal case but acknowledged that she had suffered ‘a gross injustice’. But it was ordered to return to the judge at Motril Court 2 for yet another technical report for the Town Hall. However, despite evidence put to the court by technical architects that the fixed wall was adequate, the judge ruled that the debt was outstanding. He further ordered the house be sold at auction and the proceeds used to build the new wall. “It went under the hammer in a sale that took place when travel restrictions Continues on Page 5