Tag: PSOE

Town Hall of Madrid Criticised for Selling Plot Reportedly Worth €48M for €16M

18 April 2018 – La Vanguardia

The PSOE has denounced the Government of Manuela Carmena for breaching the agreed budget for 2017 and “the most basic municipal obligation” with its sale of a plot in Carabanchel for €16 million. It alleges that the sale was a “total waste”, given that the site was reportedly worth €48 million, up to three times more.

The socialist councillor, Mercedes González, condemned the delegate for Sustainable Urban Development (DUS), José Manuel Calvo, for the sale of the plot measuring 38,140 m2, which had belonged to the EMT, for a “modicum sum” in an auction in which the property developer Pryconsa participated on its own.

The plot is located on Avenida de Carabanchel, 21, in the district of Carabanchel, in a privileged location in the opinion of the PSOE – the investiture partner of Ahora Madrid – where a significant number of social housing properties could have been built.

The socialist spokesperson on the committee denounced that the plot had been sold with the knowledge and consent of the delegate, whose team also supported the “enormous” growth of the buildability from 2,600 m2 to 27,000 m2 (…).

The plot was sold for €427/m2, or €16 million in total, even though, according to the IBI (Property Tax) charge, the cadastral value of the site is €48 million (…).

In the face of these complaints, the councillor José Manuel Calvo defended that he had not intervened in the process or the sale decision (…).

The deal between PSOE and Ahora Madrid for the 2017 budgets established that the Town Hall would not sell any of its land or properties.

Original story: La Vanguardia

Translation: Carmel Drake

New Urban Planning PGOU Approved for Málaga

25 November 2017 – Diario Sur

Following the annulment of the PGOU approved in 2010, the route map towards the normalisation of urban planning in Marbella has taken a step forward with the initial approval of some new urban planning rules. The latest document seeks to “update” the plan approved in 1986, which is still valid now and which will serve as the basis for drafting the new PGOU that the city needs. The process, which was approved by the plenary with votes in favour from the government’s team (PP and OSP) and the PSOE, and votes against from IU and Costa del Sol Sí Puede, must now be completed with text from the provincial delegation of the Junta’s Environment Board, prior to the issuance of a mandatory report. Subsequently, it will be presented to the plenary again for definitive approval (…).

In practice, and as the councillor for Land Planning, María Francisca Caracuel, explained, modifications have been made to the framework, amongst others, “which affect many homes” and which mean that “extensions, improvements and renovations will now be allowed” on buildings that were left out of the guidelines after the 2010 plan was annulled.

Another change will affect plots of land, for which it is not currently possible to grant construction licences because no approved urban planning projects exist, in accordance with the plan approved in 1986 “even though, in reality, they are already partially developed”. In these cases, the common rules open the door for the plots to be developed, by submitting an urbanisation work project “which is less complex and which can be processed in less time”.

The new rules will authorise hospitality use on the first floors of homes in the Casco Antiguo (Old Town) and will allow hotel establishments to expand their facilities onto adjoining plots even if the use of those sites is not strictly for hotel purposes (…).

Established urban plots

In the field of urban planning, the plenary also ratified (with votes in favour from the government team, against from IU and CSSP, and abstentions from the PSOE) the proposal made by the Councillor for Land Planning to incorporate established urban plots into the urban development plans, after they have been declared as such by binding legal rulings, administrative declarations, own acts, plenary agreements or by the Local Government. The councillor insisted that, given that it does not require any structural changes, there is no need for the document to be subjected to a new public consultation period, as had been requested by the other municipal groups.

In other matters, the municipal corporation also gave the green light, unanimously, to the proposal from the deputy mayor of San Pedro Alcántara, Rafael Piña (…) to begin the paperwork for the construction of a new secondary school in the south of San Pedro (…).

Finally, the plenary also approved, amongst other items, a proposal from IU to create a network of roads to connect the urbanisations between Bello Horizonte and Elviria, to form a 10km network that will offer a safe alternative to the A-7 motorway, which is “always packed and dangerous”.

Original story: Diario Sur (by Mónica Pérez)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Valencia’s PSOE Sells Its HQ In Valencia For €5.8M

30 October 2017 – Expansión

After almost a year on the market, the PSPV-PSOE’s headquarters on Calle Blanquerías in Valencia has a new owner. The spokesman for the PSPV, Jorge Rodríguez, said on Friday that the party has agreed to accept an offer amounting to €5.8 million, which means that it will have to vacate its headquarters during the next year.

The buyer is the hotel chain Myr, belonging to the Comatel group, which specialises in recreational machines, according to El Mundo. The PSPV has certainly taken advantage of the rising real estate cycle, given that the initial offers for the property did not even amount to €5 million.

The Valencian Socialist party will use the revenues raised to cover its massive debts, which amount to more than €7 million after its electoral results in recent years have led to a reduction in its income. The Valencian PP has already had to abandon its regional headquarters for the same reason.

Original story: Expansión

Translation: Carmel Drake

Gov’t Extends Eviction Moratorium Until 2020

21 March 2017 – Rtve

On Friday, the Government approved the extension of the anti-eviction moratorium for vulnerable families from their normal homes until 2020 – the initiative had been in force since 2013 and was due to expire in May of this year. From now on, the measure will include families with dependent children aged under 18. That is according the Ministry of the Economy, Industry and Competitivity, Luis de Guindos (pictured above), following the Council of Ministers meeting. He said that the aforementioned law “would be expanded and deepened” in order to protect the most vulnerable groups following the crisis.

De Guindos said that the Royal Decree Law will now cover other (new) cases so that more families can benefit from these measures. It will include vulnerable families with dependent children aged under 18 (not only those aged under 3 years old, like until now); single-parent families with dependent children (removing the need for there to be two children in single-parent families); unemployed people (without having used up the benefit); disabled people; dependent people; those with a serious illness; and cases where there is a victim of gender violence in the family unit.

The Minister for the Economy also explained that the Code of Good Practice – which financial institutions can voluntarily sign up to – includes the option of renting foreclosed normal homes at a discounted price. (…).

Agreement with the opposition parties

The text in the Royal Decree Law has been prepared with a “broad consensus” according to the Minister in a statement. De Guindos said at a press conference that all of the main parliamentary groups have been involved in the negotiations, and so he has ensured that there is a “very strong consensus to approve it”.

In fact, the Government had initially announced the extension of the moratorium on evictions of vulnerable families from their usual homes until 15 May 2019, although it was in favour of extending it for another year, as reflected in a non-legislative motion, approved by the Congress of Deputies, and that is what it has done in the end.

Socialist sources cited by Europa Press have indicated that the PSOE and the Government have agreed this decree and have also reached an agreement to submit a plan, within eight months, containing measures directed at facilitating the recovery of home ownership from people in situations of economic vulnerability that are immersed in eviction processes, unable to pay their mortgages. (…)

In any case, De Guindos confirmed that “the most important things are not the palliative measures. Instead, in order to put an end to the drama of evictions, the economic recovery needs to continue”. In his opinion, the main reasons for the 30% decrease in the number of evictions in the last year have been economic growth and the creation of employment.

Original story: Rtve

Translation: Carmel Drake

Gov’t To Extend Suspension Of Evictions For Vulnerable Families

6 February 2017 – RTVE

Last Wednesday, the Minister for the Economy, Luis de Guindos, announced that the Government will extend the moratorium that prevents families in vulnerable situations from being evicted from their primary residences. The moratorium was due to expire on 15 May this year and its extension had also been requested by the Socialist Party.

“Yes, we will do so again now (extend the moratorium), like we did in 2015. We are open to negotiations”, said De Guindos, after confirming that 24,000 families have now benefitted from this measures, which favours certain groups.

The Minister was responding to questions from the Socialist congresswoman María del Mar Rominguera (…), who asked him about the Government’s intention to extend the deadline for the suspension of evictions of the most vulnerable families from their homes.

De Guindos said that the Government has protected the people who have suffered the most during the economic crisis and pointed out that some of the measures undertaken in this regard, such as the Code of Good Practice and the Social Housing Fund, approved by the Government, have benefitted more than 76,000 vulnerable families.

Evictions from primary residences have decreased by almost 30%

De Guindos said that the Government is willing to continue with these actions because they are having a “positive” effect, although he pointed out that the most recent statistics indicate that evictions from primary residences have decreased by around 30% “and that is a result of the economic recovery”.

De Guindos insisted that the creation of employment is what will confirm the economic recovery, given that “it is not only a matter of establishing palliative measures, although they are also important”.

“If employment improves in Spain, if there are increasingly more possibilities, if we increasingly see that house prices are not collapsing, we will see how situations involving evicted families will become increasingly marginal”, he said.

The PSOE supports the extension

Meanwhile, the Socialist congresswoman said she appreciated the fact that the Government has extended the moratorium for anti-evictions, which was due to expire in May (…).

The PSOE had requested an extension of the moratorium, four years after it first came into force. Nevertheless, De Guindos did not specify how long the moratorium would be extended for. (…).

Original story: RTVE 

Translation: Carmel Drake

Cifuentes Presents New Land Act For Community Of Madrid

25 October 2016 – Expansión

Yesterday, the President of the Community of Madrid, Cristina Cifuentes (pictured above), submitted the draft bill for the new Law governing Urban Planning and Land in the Community of Madrid, an initiative long demanded by the Madrilenian real estate sector. The bill aims to clarify and organise the management of urban planning in the region, whereby replacing the existing regional Land Act, which dates back to 2001.

During its 15 years of life, the existing text has been partially modified 15 times, which, as the Ministry of the Environment, Local Administration and Land Planning itself admits, has ended up making it “difficult to understand and interpret”.

“Circumstances have changed considerably over the last 15 years and so the content of the Land Act has been completely distorted”, acknowledged Cifuentes yesterday during the presentation of the new draft bill. “This new law has been put together as a single piece of legislation to give coherence to the urban planning rules”, she added.

The regional Government plans to submit the Draft Bill to the Assembly before the end of the year and, according to Cifuentes, it hopes to obtain “the maximum consensus and support possible”. It is something that seems almost impossible, taking into account that eight months ago both the PSOE and Podemos left the technical and political tables that have been managing the text presented yesterday.

This was not helped either by the fact that Ciudadanos decided to put “an end” to these working tables in a unilateral way “to look for a new consensus”, according to an announcement last week from its spokesman in the Assembly, Ignacio Aguado. The orange party’s idea is to look for maximum political support to approve the law, and so it is advocating that the work of these tables be transferred to the specific report about the Land Act, which already exists in the Assembly.

“We want a Law that represents the consensus of all of the political groups and not another piece of steam roller legislation from the PP”, said Aguado. “Ciudadanos is going to fight to ensure that there is real citizen participation and genuine transparency in the way that urban plans are prepared. We want to put an end to the current opacity”, said the spokesman. (…).

New elements

In addition to the goal of making urban planning “more agile and transparent”, the Draft Bill presented yesterday by Cifuentes includes some important innovations. The most notable is its commitment to urban renovation and regeneration, compared with the model of expansionist urban planning under the previous legislation.

In this sense, one of the most innovative aspects is the fact that cities in the region will have the opportunity to undertake the renovation of large areas without the need to modify their General Plans. (…).

The new text retains the categories of urban land – buildable and non-buildable, but eliminates the category of unsectorised buildable land, which becomes non-buildable common land. Nothing can be built on this kind of land, under any circumstances, unless its classification is changed in the general plan upon request by the town halls themselves. “The aim is to achieve a more sustainable urban planning approach that avoids unnecessary urban planning developments”, say sources at the Ministry.

Other novelties include the creation of a Simplified General Urban Plan, designed for towns with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants and budgets of less than €6 million. Those towns may choose to adopt this framework, which is more flexible and agile than an ordinary plan, provided that the work focuses on historical centres and does not include any new developments. This framework may be applied to almost half of the 179 municipalities in the region.

Original story: Expansión (byLuis M. De Ciria and Carlota G. Velloso)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Zaragoza’s New TorreVillage Outlet Will Create 1,000 Jobs

25 October 2016 – Expansión

The new TorreVillage outlet, which is being driven by the owners of Pikolin, will create 1,000 jobs over six years

TorreVillage, the outdoor shopping outlet that is due to be built in Zaragoza, has finally been given the green light after a year and a half of debate. The concerns of Zaragoza en Común (ZEC), the political party that now leads the Town Hall in the Aragonese capital, have been set at bay by an alternative proposal, which has been backed by votes from the opposition parties: PP, PSOE and Ciudadanos.

The project involves an investment of €60 million and the property developers expect to create more than 1,000 direct jobs during the first six years of activity. The initiative is being drive by Iberebro, the real estate company owned by the Solans family, which also owns Pikolin. The outlet will be constructed on a site that has, until now, housed the central headquarters of that company, which is moving to the Zaragoza Logistics Platform (Plaza).

The shopping outlet will comprise a fashion village, an international centre for business innovation, a restaurant and concert area, an area for large format retail stores and 2,000 free parking spaces. It will house approximately 90 stores from leading brands, offering discounts of between 30% and 70% and its goal is to complete with the villages already in operation in Madrid, Barcelona and Toulouse.

The goal is to attract visitors from Aragón, País Vasco, La Rioja, Navarra, Soria, Lérida and the south of France, as well as to capture some of the traffic travelling to the Pyrenees from Madrid and the Community of Valencia. In this way, it seeks to benefit from the geostrategic location of Zaragoza, by adopting a similar philosophy to the one followed by the developers of the Puerto Venecia shopping centre, also located in the Aragonese capital, which opened in 2012 and which is one of the largest shopping centres in Europe.

Original story: Expansión (by Marcos Español)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Town Hall Of Madrid Shelves ‘Operación Chamartín’

26 May 2016 – Expansión

The Town Hall of Madrid shelved Operación Chamartín yesterday with votes in favour (of shelving it) from Ahora Madrid and PSOE. As such the project, inspired by the PP and promoted by Distrito Castellana Norte (DCN), which is owned by BBVA and the construction company San José, has been buried.

After denying the definitive approval of the Partial Plan to extend La Castellana at the Plenary meeting, the municipal executive announced her intention to invite the Ministry of Development, Adif, the Community of Madrid and DCN to work on “a definitive proposal and to start the development of the area as soon as possible, in line with the basis and strategy document from the municipal proposal, presented by the Town Hall on 10 May”.

The Government team led by Manuela Carmena also announced its intention to call a public debate immediately and even to hold an extraordinary Plenary meeting to present its alternative plan, which it described as “feasible, reasonable and sustainable”.

“Now, the general interest is placed on the business. With this project, the culture of shady urban planning is over. We hope that both the Community of Madrid and the Acting Ministry of Development abandon the deadlock situation regarding the development of the north of the city”, said Calvo.

The Town Planning Councillor said that the Town Hall will put all of the means available to “streamline to the maximum” the necessary processes and provide legal support to the planned actions, with the aim of commencing the improvement works at the North and Fuencarral Junctions in 2017 and remodelling the Chamartín train station at the beginning of 2018.

Meanwhile, sources at DCN said that approval for the project has been denied, but that “it is still on the table”.

The property developer considers that, if the political will exists, then the project may be resumed. “DCN continues to offer its plans to Madrid and to Madrid’s citizens”, added the same sources.

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Madrid’s Town Hall Votes Against Operación Chamartín

19 May 2016 – Expansión

The Town Hall of Madrid has taken another step in its crusade against Operación Chamartín, promoted by Distrito Castellana Norte (DCN) – jointly owned by BBVA and San José – and has thereby buried the private initiative for the extension of La Castellana, backed by the previous PP regional government.

The latest chapter in the battle to control the development of the area in the north of the capital was written yesterday with the Committee for Sustainable Urban Development’s rejection of Operación Chamartín. Specifically, the Committee ruled out the project with votes from Ahora Madrid and the PSOE, its partner at the Town Hall.

By contrast, councillors from the PP and Ciudadanos parties, who are in favour of the project, voted against the proposal to deny the definitive approval of the Partial Interior Reform Plan promoted by DCN, included on the Committee’s agenda for the day.

The plans for Operación Chamartín were submitted at the beginning of 2015 by the previous Town Hall, the Community of Madrid and the Ministry of Development together with the development company, but it was not debated in the municipal Plenary because of the upcoming elections.

During the Committee’s debate, the PP councillor José Luis Martínez Almeida warned about the “criminal liabilities” that the Government team may incur for not basing its decisions on reports and for seeking to substitute a global agreement for the development of the north of Madrid with a 16-page plan.

Meanwhile, the Ciudadanos councillor Bosco Labrado asked the Government’s team to look for a real solution for DCN’s project.

By contrast, the PSOE councillor Mercedes González congratulated the Government’s team on the new proposal for the north of Madrid and asked that the minutes reflect that his political party vindicates Eduardo Manglada and all of the other people who have contributed to changing the city. He mentioned Eduardo Leira – the husband of the mayoress – and Enrique Bardají, amongst others.

The Committee’s rejection of DCN’s project, which still needs to go through the Plenary, comes a week after Manuela Carmena’s town planning team presented its own alternative for the development of the north of the capital, known as Madrid Puerta Norte, at a public meeting. .

The alternative project

These plans, amongst other things, drastically reduce the number of homes to be constructed, down from around 17,800 to 4,600, and cut the buildable surface area from 3,270,053 sqm, planned by DCN, to 1,750,197 sqm.

The Town Hall’s proposal, which was presented by the mayoress herself and by a representative from the Sustainable Urban Planning Department, José Manuel Calvo, has not been agreed with the Ministry of Development or the Community of Madrid, which together with the Town Hall own 82% of the affected land, or with BBVA and San José, the promoters of the plan and owners of the management rights over the land.

In order to understand the Town Hall’s plans at first hand, the Ministry of Development has called a meeting for this Friday to which it has invited the mayoress of the capital, the President of the Community of Madrid, Cristina Cifuentes, contacts from the property developer DCN, and representatives from BBVA and the construction firm San José.

Sources at DCN declined to comment on the plans presented by the Town Hall as they are waiting to be provided with further information.

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Cifuentes Abolishes Madrid’s 3-Storey Land Act

11 December 2015 – Expansión

On Thursday, the Plenary Assembly of Madrid abolished the section of the Land Act that prohibits the construction of buildings of more than three storeys, thanks to support from members of the PP and Ciudadanos and despite the opposition votes by members of Podemos and the PSOE.

Enrique Veloso, one of Ciudadanos’s members, who defended the draft Law for the modification of the Land Act in the Community of Madrid, said that the now abolished law “has done a lot of damage to town planning”. He criticised the fact that this restriction to construct only three storey properties was applied in a blanket fashion across all towns, without taking into account the characteristics of each municipality.

Ramón Espinar, member of Podemos, said that this partial reform of the Land Act “has circumvented the agreement” that existed between all of the parliamentary groups to draft a new Land Act. He added that the current PP is “the same as ever” and he criticised its rejection of a comprehensive reform of the aforementioned law, which “understood that land was being preyed upon as a resource”.

The socialist member Rafael Montoya declared that his party’s town planning model is “compatible with the interests of residents and is respectful of the environment”, and he confirmed that the abolition of the three-storey restriction “would not help to generate consensus”. He advocated a comprehensive reform of the current Land Act and he criticised Ciudadanos’s collaboration with the PP, stressing that both parties “form part of the same right (wing)”.

The PP member Diego Lozano accused Podemos and PSOE of abandoning the motion for the reformation of the Land Act and said that they do not understand “the urgency” of the need for a comprehensive modification of the law that was approved eight years ago.

Original story: Expansión

Translation: Carmel Drake