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Spanish Cabinet endeavors to stop rampant builders

The Spanish government has taken a decisive step to wrest control of the country's pristine forests, hillsides and coasts -- or what remains of them -- from short-sighted and ambitious local authorities.

The Cabinet has put forward a law to prohibit municipal and regional authorities from reclassifying environmentally sensitive land for building, casting a protective net on roughly 25 percent of Spanish territory.

The protected lands are those deemed to have some ecological value by the EU, known as the Natura 2000 Network.

"Local and regional governments were building houses and roadways on protected areas or simply reducing the boundaries of the Natura Network," said Theo Oberhuber, coordinator of the environmental association Ecologistas en Accion.

The law would grant the central government power to expropriate the land from negligent regional governments. It also calls for an annual inventory of plant and wildlife species and offers tax breaks to private conservation projects.

The future of nesting eagles and other species was often left to the discretion of local officials, who welcomed unchecked development as a way to create jobs and put their village on the map.

Under-funded municipalities use building fees to raise money -- with the potential for corruption that reached its peak in the Costa del Sol resort of Marbella with the arrest last year of the former mayor and the dissolution of the town council. Councilors allegedly shared 22 million euros (US$29.4 million) in bribes from building contractors.

The Marbella case focused attention on other scandals, from Andratx in Majorca to Ciempozuelos in Madrid. At least half a dozen former mayors are under investigation.

About 100,000 homes in Spain are believed to have been built with licences wrongly handed out by corrupt or inefficient town officials.

The booming construction industry has clogged the landscape with cranes, scaffolding and villas aggressively marketed to foreign second-home buyers.

Once merely coastal phenomena, golf courses, residential towers and suburban blocks of low-rise flats now engulf cities, spring up along the drying central plains and penetrate the northern woods in the interior. The environmental ministry estimates that Spain's urban area has increased by 25 percent since 1990.

A public outcry against rampant development has been mounting with greater awareness of real estate corruption and drought and desertification making protective measures more popular.

Locals protested when builders started clearing a pine forest in Avila, habitat of the black stork. An entire town on the Costa del Sol went on strike for a day to protest at the planned construction of two golf courses and 800 luxury homes.
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