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For those that haven’t lived through it, it’s hard to imagine the soul crushing effect of having your plans and dreams of a new life in Spain shattered. Your very home threatened with demolition and as a result your life savings too. A life dismantled by a town planning apocalypse.

 

Yet that is exactly what happened to hundreds of expats in just one small village, Llíber, in Alicante over a period of just five years.

 

No less than 292 new, high-value properties were constructed in Llíber between 1999 and 2004, leading the population of the village to double to 1,200, 55% of whom are foreign residents. Ancient history, you may think but, for those still living through this situation it is still, almost 24 years on, their day-to-day reality.

 

The mostly foreign (and mostly British) owners – there are more Brits than Spaniards in that village – were told that their new property possessed a building licence approved by the then town council. None of those licences were legal and consequently none of the properties were or are. All of these properties are still 100% illegal.

 

Now, finally, that situation is about to change. The reasons are many, but the unwillingness of many of the residents affected to give up on their dream of living in Spain is a major one. Not least of all, credit go to Adrian Hobbs, the president of the association created to defend their interests, the AULN, and to Charles Svoboda “El Terrible”, who helped and encouraged Adrian and others to create the AULN, and many associations like it.

 

The legalisation of their homes is also being made possible by the creation of a new type of licence (MIT) designed for legalising rural properties built pre-2014, and the help of the current team running the Llíber council. All these factors are finally pushing at the same teetering domino.

 

The process of legalising the properties is already underway. On March 1 of this year, some 30 or so application forms (GV 60301) were given in, for phase 1 approval. Phase 2, the certification of compliance with the rules of the licence and therefore recognition of the legality of the properties, now has a date too, January 30, 2024, which is just three months away.

 

What a day that will be. That said, it’s just the first of many dominoes that need pushing over and dreams and lives to be resurrected. The AVPT, the agency in charge of regulating and controlling rural properties, has conservatively estimated that there are some 194,000 properties of this type just in the Valencia region, 98% of which are apt for the MIT licence.

 

That’s 600,000 people directly affected, in some areas almost all of whom are expats and mostly British and many times that in friends and family that share their grief. You have to add up the next six countries of foreign property owners to match the UK residents figure, according to figures from the National Statistics Institute for the year 2022. There are 17 towns just in the province of Alicante which are majority foreign residents. That’s a hell of a lot of dreams to be recovered, but the first domino is now falling and we should all celebrate its imminent demise.