A change of direction

Not long after we moved here, a plan was set out to build a hotel and spa along with a golf practice course at the top of our road. Idearco paid the city council 2.1 million Euros for 35,000 square metres of land to build an aparthotel and the spa and a further 600,000 Euros to build a golf course on a further 45,000 square metres of land. In addition Idearco paid 4% of the cost of the licenses.

Then Idearco extended the design from the one in this artist’s impression and advertised houses that they intended building on the Internet.

The Valencian Autonomous Government stopped the project from going ahead because the reclassification of the land from rural to urban had not been authorised by them. Bigastro town council therefore had no choice but to annul the special plan for its construction.

Now both Idearco and the town council want to come to an agreement about what to do with the land. The mayor, Raúl Valerio Medina says that the best solution for both parties would be to resolve the matter without a recourse to the courts.

All parties concerned now consider that the original idea is no longer viable. The hope was that a rural hotel just outside the town would have attracted tourists and brought wealth to Bigastro. In the present economic climate that is not going to happen. Twenty years ago that might have worked but not now. In the first years that we lived here, caravans would come up to Camping La Pedrera and holiday in the rural surroundings; that is no longer the case.

Idearco have other uncompleted projects in Sector D-6 so I doubt that they are in a position to start another one up here. The area down to the coast is already littered with ugly building sites; the last thing we needed was yet another part completed project on our doorsteps thank you.

Quite what will now be built has not been decided but the thoughts are for something less ambitious, something more related to rural tourism which to be honest is more appropriate for the area. Actually, we quite like the land as it is.

Before they decide anything, I hope that some improvements are made to the road that leads down from the area to the town. In particular, it would be good if the problem caused by the storm drain spilling out onto the road just above the junction of Calle Le Vegan and Calle Cañada de Andrea is resolved. Every time it rains heavily the road is flooded with mud filled water from there down to the water collector. We call it the Rio de Andrea.