New Rules for Building on Spain's Coast

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Spain's parliament has approved revisions to the coastal law which critics say will make it easier for developers to build on the waterfront.

The new law allows construction within 20 meters of the coastline instead of 100 meters and leases for buildings were extended for 75 years.

Members of the majority conservative Popular Party said the new law was necessary to protect the coastline and prevent the demolition of buildings with expiring leases. It also allows the repair of existing buildings, which may have been prevented by the previous coastal law.

"There will not be new construction, hotels can be modernized ... but without gaining in height, volume or size," Spanish environment minister Miguel Arias Canete told reporters.

But critics charged the new law will open up the coast to development and is nothing more than a handout to developers.

Greenpeace's coastal affairs spokeswoman Pilar Marcos told AFP the law "sets us back 25 years in environmental protection" and panders to the "private interests" of property developers.

"It is the culmination of the barbarities of the building boom," she said in a statement.

Opposition leader Jose Luis Abalos said the reform "puts an end to the most serious attempt ever made in Spain to protect our coasts."
 
Spain's coastal law, approved in 1988, was designed to limit development along the waterfront. But in the building boom that gripped Spain post-2000, dozens of projects were built illegally in the coastal zone, approved by local authorities who, in many cases, were bribed by developers, investigations have found. Around the country elected officials and city bureaucrats have been tried on corruption charges.  

PP officials said the new law "would give greater security to thousands of homeowners, including many foreigners, who might otherwise have lost their houses because they were in previously illegal areas or had invalid licenses," Reuters reports.

Mark Stucklin, who tracks the market for Spanish Property Insight, told World Property Channel;

"The 1988 coastal law has been a miserable failure that did nothing to protect the coast from over-development whilst causing anguish for many owners. The law has always been applied inconsistently and arbitrarily, and I think it should have been scrapped altogether.

Nevertheless, the new changes are a step in the right direction. At least they allow owners to upgrade the housing stock that already exists, which should be good for the Spanish coast. Talk of a new construction wave is just scaremongering. And anyway, the more draconian laws did nothing to stop the last one, so I can't see how the new law will be any worse. The problem is not the law, it's the implementation."