Monuments to greed and foolishness

In Tempo, Benidorm was to be the tallest residential building in Europe. Sadly, only 80 out of the 269 flats were presold.

The developer, Olga Urbana were offered 93 million euros by Caixa Galicia to build the monument but that was in the heady days when banks were awash with funds. The debts of the bank have now been assumed by Sareb, the bad bank that was set up to absorb these debts.

Sareb now want to sell the apartments and thinks there might be foreign investors who would be willing to buy the whole building at the right price but only if it was free of tenants – which of course it isn’t.

As well as thousands of unsold and half-built flats, the savings banks in Spain funded a whole raft of white elephants: the airport at Ciudad Real, with a runway that can accommodate the giant Airbus A380, and another airport at Castellón, neither of which is in operation; the high-speed Toledo to Cuenca rail link, which was shut down for lack of passengers; the City of Culture in Santiago de Compostela, which is in danger of never being completed; and the Oscar Niemeyer-designed International Cultural Centre in Avilés, which has faced a struggle to stay open.

I understand that the airport at Corvera is facing all sorts of problems as well and is unlikely to open before Easter 2014.