Government gives Marbella town hall 30 days to remove the seawall it was fined for in 2022

Marbella town hall has received an injunction from the government's coasts authority, Demarcación de Costas, dated 30 May, which gives it 30 days to remove the seawall built in April 2022 to prevent the collapse of the promenade on Casablanca beach, after a storm.

This is a sanctioning procedure with an obligation of restitution, that is, to put things back as they were before the seawall was built, something the acting mayor, Ángeles Muñoz, has ruled out: "At no time are we going to remove this element that prevents the promenade from collapsing with the consequent risk to the safety of the area," she said.

Muñoz said, "The town hall is going to request a technical report from Obras [the public works department] to send it to Costas," adding that it will take "technical and legal measures to avoid this intervention in the middle of the town's high season".

The acting mayor has accused Pedro Sánchez's government of "disloyalty to Marbella". "More than a year later and just two days after the municipal elections, in the middle of the high season, we have received a request to remove the seawall voluntarily, within 30 days, or they will do it and pass the bill on to us," she said.

She also argued that these works were carried out "urgently" as a solution to the damage caused by a storm.

For his part, the government's sub-delegate in Malaga province, Javier Salas, has told Muñoz "that she has to comply with the regulations and that she cannot use public resources to protect actions outside the law as if she were still in Gil's time", referring to the former mayor, Jesús Gil.

"The statements of the mayor of Marbella are unbecoming of a representative of a public administration and unworthy of a person who represents the municipality of Marbella," he added.

The government office in Malaga has stated, "The solution, according to the technicians of Costas and always with the prior authorisation of the competent administration, would have been to strengthen the promenade wall and not the solution carried out by the town hall through the installation of a seawall occupying more beach and without authorisation."

In this sense, it pointed out that Costas "authorised 1,800 installations on public maritime domain in 2022 for all the town councils along the coast of Malaga, including Marbella, always according to procedure". "The regulations are there for citizens and public administrations to comply with, and Marbella town hall must adhere to them as citizens and public administrations do," stressed Salas.

He also said, "Pedro Sánchez's government is committed to the beaches of Marbella and has carried out improvement works on them in 2022 and 2023".

"In addition to these actions, there is also the promotion of the stabilisation projects for the beaches of San Pedro and Marbella, which are in their final phase of environmental processing," he said.