While buying a holiday home in Marbella is fairly straightforward and far safer these days, opening and running a beach bar business is less straightforward, as many expat entrepreneurs have found out to their costs. Now a legal wrangle over jurisdiction between the Coasts Authority and the authority in charge of Puerto Banus’ concessions is threatening two beach bars with demolition.
If only the right hand knew what the left hand was about…
The stretch of beach under dispute is the Levante Beach in Marbella. While the Coasts Authority ordered their demolition on 6th April, the chiringuitos’ owners believe the Coast Authority is mistaken over who has jurisdiction in this area. One of the chiringuitos has lodged an appeal against the demolition order with a court in Malaga.
Aptly named La Marina and Levante, the two chiringuitos are simple, wooden constructions right on the Levante Beach at Puerto Banus and have been in business for many years. It is therefore a mystery to both owners why the Coast Authority should have decided that these bars are illegal, occupying land that is not designated port area, but public maritime-terrestrial domain that should not be built on, according to the official blurb.
Coast Authority workers cordoned off the two beach bars last week and Marbella Town Council warned both owners that demolition work would start unless they agreed to take down the structures themselves voluntarily.
Levante beach bar opened the day after the cordon had been erected, but La Marina remained closed. Both owners are understandably upset. They have been paying a fee to the company holding the concession for Puerto Banus for the use of the land for many years, but their businesses may now be worthless thanks to the Coast Authority’s decision. The Levante bar owner has, in fact, been paying a fee since 1982, when the bar and restaurant first opened.
The mind boggles how it can have taken authorities several decades to discover that somebody had “parked” their beach business illegally on that stretch of Marbella’s Levante Beach. It’s not exactly a positive marketing ploy for Spain’s infamous Golden Visa either. Non-EU entrepreneurs and private investors are asked to invest up to 600,000 Euros for the right to reside, work and run a business in Spain. Why should they invest, when they can see negative headlines like the ones surrounding the whole chiringuitos issue virtually every week?
It seems that the Coast Authority only began challenging the concessionaire’s right to this part of the beach in 2010, cheerfully ignoring a document issued in 2011 by the Junta de Andalucía’s Public Works Department that states clearly: both beach bars were erected on land that is within the limits of the concession granted to Puerto Banus in 1967 – and therefore making both chiringuitos legal.
While the owners of the Levante beach bar are waiting for the Malaga court to make a decision, they are entitled by law to remain open for business. The owners have forwarded their opening licence issued by the Junta de Andalucía, their municipal licence issued by Marbella Town Hall and receipts for annual tax payments made to the council in support of their court case.
A negative Approach to foreign Investment
It begs the question how any expat wishing to invest into a local business and property is supposed to safeguard against such unexpected set-backs. Given that there are still thousands of British expats waiting for a court ruling on their supposedly illegally constructed holiday homes and permanent residential properties in Spain, this latest scandal is hardly likely to instil confidence among potential investors in Andalucía’s authorities and adherence to property legislation.
Anyone contemplating buying a Marbella property with the view to live and work at the Costa del Sol should ensure that they keep a file with every scrap of document supporting their claims to both residential home purchases and business enterprises. They may well need it at a later court hearing!
The inference of this latest case is also clear: no type of investment can be made in Spain without the aid of a first-rate lawyer. Unfortunately, that tends to bite into purchasing budgets, as legal documents must be filed with a plethora of authorities and must be translated for the benefit of the investor.
However, while investors can cope losing several square metres of garden around their El Madronal mansion in a legal land rights squabble, or even do without a medium-sized swimming pool outside their Elviria villa, foreign investors cannot live happily in their place in the sun with a demolition order hanging over their heads. It seems that some Andalucía-based authorities have yet to understand this simple fact.