Cartagena Town Hall offers soothing promises to anti-development protesters from La Azohía

Howeowners in San Ginés are seeking a ban on seafront apartment blocks in the palm grove of La Azohía

The residents and property owners of La Azohía who have been campaigning against a proposal to build seafront apartment blocks alongside the palm tree grove at the western end of the San Ginés residential area will feel that they won a partial victory on Thursday, when representatives of the Town Hall of Cartagena promised to limit the building in the area.

It has emerged over the last 6 weeks or so that there are plans to build 135 apartments in 4-storey blocks right next to the seafront and the wooded palm tree grove which lies at the mouth of the Rambla del Cañar runoff channel, and the reactivation of stipulation in the “Plan Parcial” of San Ginés (dating from 1987) appears to make this possible. However, homeowners in San Ginés, which consisted almost completely of detached and semi-detached chalets until the construction of El Pinar de San Ginés around 20 years ago, are keen to protect this oasis of greenery on the coast.

On the face of it, the words of Diego Ortega, councillor for Urbanismo, may go some way towards allaying the fears. He stated on Thursday that “there is no project to build homes”, adding that he has no qualms about arranging a formal meeting to inform and explain the situation. He also states that the new land use plan is open to public scrutiny and suggestions until 17^th August and referred to the idea of the owner of the 55,000-square-metre plot, Inversiones Inmobiliarias Canvives SAU, to build on 15,265 square metres of the land.

Should this project be accepted and approved, a building plan will have to be presented and this is turn will have to undergo an environmental stability evaluation before the building licence is awarded.

But this falls a fair distance short of the aim of many of the protesters who gathered at the Town Hall on Thursday, demanding a complete abandonment of plans to build on what is one of the few front-line stretches on the Mediterranean coastline where construction has so far not altered the natural environment. They point out that environmental awareness has grown enormously since the original documents were drawn up 37 years ago, and are requesting a plan which is more in line with the reality of the 21^st century that with the speculative construction which led to the Spanish property boom in the early years of the new millennium.

This view is echoed by the PSOE spokesman in Cartagena, Manuel Torres, who speaks of the need to preserve the palm and eucalyptus trees which exist in the “Palmeral del Alacrán”, and that to build here is wildly at odds with the goal of environmentally sustainable development promoted by the Town Hall.

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