There has been a lot of coverage in the European Press about the LRAU (Land Grab Law) and how it has affected expatriates who have come to live in the Comunidad Valenciana. However, let us not forget that the local Spaniards are also strongly affected by excessive development and the LRAU.
To illustrate this, we post a translation of a letter to the Editor published in Las Provincias on 13th February 2006 (Translation thanks to David Barnes) Note: we are not trying to score political points here - Agenda21 is non-political - just emphasising that everyone is in the same boat together!
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
"I think the PP of the Valencian Community should think again if they really believe that they will again be the winners in the next elections, even if only for a moment because they are too busy denying the undeniable and turning a blind eye when it suits them on urbanization. Because in my humble opinion as a former voter I think they will not, and basically because they have fallen down badly on land policy. However much they may brag that they have reformed the accursed LRAU - introduced by PSOE but which they have managed very well to exploit economically throughout their mandate - and that they have brought in the LUV (which is the same dog with a different collar).
There are so many people affected by the hundreds of PAI’s with their corresponding golf courses, people who see the sweat and the dreams of their whole lives thrown away with the excuse of a rationalisation of existing houses (which in many cases have been there for more than thirty years), built round the planned or in many cases already constructed golf courses, people who pay their taxes, who have managed to respect the flora and fauna, who in most cases have turned an arid wasteland into a real garden, and who if they are not urbanised it is because the very Town Halls that now compel them previously prevented them, and who now find themselves abandoned, insulted and robbed on the back of a law made for developers.
V. Pellicer, Massamagrell "
