01/09/2026
MUNICIPAL SERVICES IN AREAS WITH ILLEGAL CONSTRUCTIONS:
everyone in the town council, from the last citizen to arrive to the mayor, is guided by the PGOU (Plan General de Ordenación Urbana).
this urban planning tool dictates to all of us how urban planning can and should be developed and how the demands of the different areas of the municipality can and should be met.
the urban ones, where it is possible to build and the non-urban ones, where it is not possible to build.
In the non-urban areas there are the so-called "diseminados", whose development, infrastructures such as access roads, electricity, water, telephone and sanitation supplies are also regulated in a very clear and specific way.
The PGOU is not dictated by a majority or a mayor, but must be in accordance and in line with the LISTA, the Andalusian Urban Planning Law, the POTA (Plan de Ordenación Territorial de Andalucia-costa del sol), the national land law, and the regulations of urban management.
All these laws and regulations define rights and obligations in each territory and what can and cannot be done in each of them.
Until a few years ago, the compadreo and the arm over the shoulder made that they were violated again and again, until the slow and very slow justice began to put the foot on the wall and there began the problems for those who did not enforce the law, many of whom have ended up disqualified or in jail and for those who thought that the law did not go with them.
Therefore, in order to know what rights you have or don't have in a certain territory, you have to read at least the part of the PGOU that affects the area of interest and then, knowing what is there, you go and do what you have to do. if you do what you want to do instead of what you can do, you have to face the consequences of lack of services, coercive fines, and headaches. but it is obvious: he cannot demand what he is not legally entitled to, if anything, he can ask for an attempt to understand the circumstances and, as far as possible and within the law, to lend a hand to those who are in this situation. this hand can obviously be lent after all the things that are legally required to be done in the areas with legal constructions have been done, which is not always possible due to budgetary restrictions, one does not do everything in one's own home, but what one can. Incidentally, the law I am referring to does not provide that rural roads should be asphalted and in many cases advises against it and in others prohibits it. concrete and asphalt are not always the solution in rural areas.
The corporation of 2011 was trying to make the Junta de Andalucía understand a real situation, de facto, and for them it is taking the steps that are marked from Seville. these steps will never mean that all the houses will be regularised, nor will they mean that those that are regularised will not have to pay for the licenses that they did not pay for, nor that the town hall, that is, all the citizens, will have to pay for the infrastructure of the settlement to be legalised, nor that the owners of this settlement will not have to make the cessions that all the others have made.
everyone who has bought in a legal area has seen the transfer of land for facilities, for roads and the 10% tax on average use, as well as the construction and installation of infrastructures: electricity, sewage, telephone, access, water, which the law obliges everyone who builds legally. In other words, to say that it is not only not legal to say that I am here, put me everything, but it is not acceptable for the vast majority of the citizens who bear all the legal requirements in the cost of their homes and in their mortgages.
