The Auken report to the European Parliament may be above to be scuppered by a conspiracy between Spain’s two principal mafias. (I notice that PSOE-friendly IberiaNature still hasn’t got round to blogging the PSOE’s proposed long-term legalisation of illegal construction on Spanish coasts, despite its abundant condemnation of the Aznar government over the Prestige accident, which had only short-term consequences. And, by the way, the waves off Santander the other day were the largest ever only if one accepts that history started in 1990. Funny business, global warming.) (Update: There’s a roundup of the devastation caused by construction in Andalusia over at the Olive Press, and a new case of apparent corruption leading to more coastal building in PSOE Mijas.)
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Isn’t retrospective action against the Spanish development mafia – most of whose money is now safely offshore – closing the stable door after the whores have bolted?
I suppose one of the factors in all this is cost. The PSOE was probably hoping to blame all the illegal development on evil Anglo-Saxons and so get away with demolishing it all for nothing. However if (as things you’ve linked to imply) total value of British residential is €1300 million and 24% of it is illegal, and if the Europeans say that most of it is illegal because of a (deliberate) lack of coordination between local and regional government, the Andalusian PSOE government is going to face a compensation bill of perhaps around €300 million. Which is probably rather less than they have accumulated in Gibraltar, but still.
I’m interested in the money-laundering angle: do the PP, PSOE, CiU etc use different accountants/entities/etc, or do they bump into each other in bank receptions in Andorra, Gibraltar etc?