Following the rapid development of Spanish coastal tourism facilities and hotels over the past 50 years, it seems that action will now be taken. A much talked-about Strategy for Coastal Sustainability aims at stopping human occupation and recovering the coastlines natural beauty.
This was reported during the first week of December by the BBC.
Similarly to the situation in Bulgaria during the past 10 years, Spain has overdeveloped and overconstructed the coast of the whole country, which comprises only seven per cent of the territory but is where 44 per cent of the local population resides. This can be a good example for Bulgarian city planners and officials who face no other option than to see their permitted objects demolished sooner or later. Moves in this direction have started in Bulgaria as well.
Another reason that Spains government has undertaken these strict measures is a report by its local environment ministry that predicted Spains beaches would shrink by an average of 15 metres by 2050 as a result of a rising sea level, the BBC said. This fact is a consequence of global warming and the melting of icebergs, which means such effects are also very probable for Bulgaria.
The BBCs article entitled Spain bulldozes its concrete costas starts and ends with an interview with a Spanish-British couple who purchased a holiday home at Banana Beach, a plush seaside development in Marbella. Their building is now among the sites planned for demolition by Andalusias government.
Even though Mrs Toomeys husband is a retired property lawyer from London, in addition to the couple having used the services of two Spanish solicitors and an independent notary when buying their apartment in 2004, the deal was found to have been illegal, the BBC said. Only later would the couple learn that the site should never have been approved for residential use, the article said. In addition, the retired couple might lose their savings if their house is bulldozed.
Moreover, the BBC said that Banana Beach was one of dozens of big money construction projects approved in the 1990s and even carrying its picturesque name, the building was only a huge concrete development.
Like the case at Bulgarian Black Sea resorts Slunchev Bryag, Zlatni Pyasutsi, Nessebar, Sozopol and many others, three quarters of all coastal land in some Spanish communities has been urbanised as, again similar to Bulgaria, a huge amount of foreign tourists annually visit the Spanish beaches and a number of them decide to settle down in the southern warmth.
The last decade has seen the same number of new buildings as in the whole of our previous history, Maria Jose Caballero of Greenpeace Spain said. Caballero further said the local mentality provided that anybody could build what they wanted along the coast, while now the authorities faced the need to change this perception, the BBC reported.
According to the BBC article, the Spanish left-wing government is proud of the fact that in 2007 it demolished 665 illegal structures. As quoted by the BBC, Spanish coastal police officer Juan Fernandez-Renada, who implements the governments coastal policy in Malaga, said: The environment represents our future. According to him, it is important that the tourism economy works with their natural resources, as the two can be self-reinforcing, the BBC reported.
Hopefully Bulgarian authorities and civilians also start seeing things from this angle and start trying to conserve the few remaining natural coastal pearls of Bulgaria.
Otherwise, the duty to demolish even more buildings than the number constructed at present would again fall on their shoulders after some years. As many years that pass is the amount of work more that they would have, together with the illegal buildings owners and the deceived locals and foreigners who decided to settle there.
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