Continues on

AN expat is facing prison for failing to demolish his home after he fell foul of a town hall’s ‘laissez faire’ planning rules. Gurney Davey, aged 67, only found out about the six-month sentence when a court document was delivered to a neighbour’s house. “I went straight to Tolox town hall with it. They told me I shouldn’t have received it yet,” he told the Olive Press.

Legalise

“They said they were going to be sending the notification to me once they had stamped it.” The news came as a massive bolt from the blue for Davey, whose wife has just died of cancer, which he believes worsened from the stress of the case. He had never been told about the court case that followed on from a Guardia Civil denuncia for an ‘illegal build’. Davey’s two-bed home - built in 2004 - should never have been built according to the Malaga court. In 2016, and then again in 2017, Davey was ordered to knock down his house, but, in common with a neighbour, he waited for more details. While his Spanish neighbour,

NOT AGAIN

British expat faces demolition of his 17 year home - and a spell in prison

EXCLUSIVE By Dilip kuner

Irene Millan, 29, did eventually hear from the court again, she was given six months to ‘legalise’ her property - an option Davey was never given. However, his neighbour’s apparent good luck turned into a poisoned chalice. Having spent €20,000 with the town hall to legalise the dwelling, the court finally refused to accept the new paperwork provided by the council. Instead, demolition was ordered - which went ahead last week. To add insult to injury Irene’s 54-year-old father, Manuel Millan, whose name was on the deeds, was also sentenced to six months jail and handed a fine of €6 a day for a year. Now Davey is terrified he is set to lose his home at any moment. It comes just two months since his wife Diana died from bowel cancer, at the age of 71, in April. “We thought we had done everything right at the time. We got legal advice and went through a lawyer in order to get permission to build the home. “Diana fought breast cancer for six years before bowel cancer - I from legal firm Manzanares, told them that planning permission would be applied for as an almacen - or ‘warehouse’. This way it would come under the remit of Tolox town hall, which would give permission and later they could ‘legalise’ the property. The language of one legal letter, seen by the Olive Press, suggests this would be a mere formality. But the property never got legalised. In fact, the Tolox mayor of the time, Juan Vera, has since been jailed and fined for his part in a scheme to allow up to 350 properties to be built on land classified as ‘rural’. In most cases he had used the very same ‘lax’ procedure of applying to build an ‘almacen’ to try to keep the prying eyes of the Junta authorities away. “We thought that was the way things worked in Spain,” said Davey, a retired builder. “We went to see a lawyer and got advice. It turns out that was not the smart thing to do. “Why would we deliberately try to build illegally? It makes no sense that we would sell up everything and risk it all.” Now Davey’s first thoughts are to avoid serving the jail sentence. He said: “My lawyer is trying to get the sentence suspended.” In the meantime he has been forced to ask the town hall for permission to knock his own property down. “I will do it myself. I will borrow a JCB from someone and flatten my home.”

THE successful rollout of the COVID vaccination campaign in Castellon Province has cut the number of deaths from the virus by more than 96%. Official figures show that nine people died from acute COVID-19 infection in May, compared to the 219 deaths registered in February. During the month an estimated 300,000 doses of the jab were administered in the

Vaccine success

province. By prioritising over-80s and residents of caring homes, plus their carers, all nursing homes in the province were declared to be totally COVID-free in March while fatality figures fell sharply across the province.

DEMOLITION: Expat Gurney Davey is being forced to knock down his own house and faces six months jail

Free at last

THE Valencian curfew will finally end on Monday. Despite a slight rise in new COVID-19 cases, Valencian president, Ximo Puig, confirmed on Tuesday that the restriction will expire at 11.59pm on June 7. The region and the Balearic Islands have been the only parts of Spain to keep a curfew going since the State of Alarm ended on May 9. Puig said: “The decision to end the curfew has been influenced by the fact that the Valencian Community has had 11 consecutive weeks of COVID infections being below the 50 cases per 100,000 people threshold.”

Limited

Numbers though have gone up in the last fortnight from just below 30 cases to 34.7, due to increased mobility. The Valencian government’s COVID committee will meet today(June 3) to discuss what changes, if any, they will make to non-curfew measures. They have powers over all business opening hours, including hospitality, in addition to how many people can meet in a group. Ximo Puig has also suggested that a limited reopening of nightlife businesses that were forced to close last August might be discussed today. Nightlife operators have been allowed to trade on the same licences as bars and restaurants, which means they have to close at 12.30am under current rules.