It’s exactly four years to the day since the Junta de Andalucia, in one fell swoop, destroyed the building industry in Andalucia by knocking down the home of an innocent retired British couple called Helen and Len Prior in Vera.
This home, the first home to be demolished by the Junta and, to date, the only one demolished in the province, was supposed to be the start of a great wave of demolishments of illegal homes across the region. In reality, the international uproar scared Seville witless and caused them to hide their heads under the sofa cushions.
And tomorrow, if all goes well, another nasty piece of legislation will be signed into law by Andalucia, in an attempt to legalise the 11,000 homes across the province built in exactly the same way as the Priors. Of course, the homeowners will be asked to pay through the nose for the priviledge, and the Priors will still be left without compensation, but at least it looks as if something is happening. And all that without bothering any of the local multimillionaries who made so much money by bribing the local officials into looking the other way whilst they built tens of thousands of illegal homes across Spain.