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- Identity: the
building blocks of
2. Literature
and philosophy
3. Art and
architecture
4. Performing
arts
5. Cinema
and fashion
6. Media and
communications
7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
the details of
Nightmares in concrete
All too often, Spain’s modern vernacular architecture
(a rather formulaic assortment of cuboid apartments
and houses) has been deposited on the landscape
by ruinous planning policies. It began with Franco.
The clamour for economic growth in his later years
led to an unregulated free-for-all of development,
concentrated in particular along Spain’s previously
chaste Mediterranean coast. Despite pledges from
successive governments, the rot continues. Planning
laws have been ignored across the country – houses,
apartment blocks and hotels have been built with
abandon, unrestrained by environmental concerns
or planning laws. Fines have been meted out but
unsanctioned buildings are rarely torn down. Spaniards
also talk of the bulging brown envelopes passed around
local town halls (where corruption appears almost
ingrained) giving property speculators free rein.
National disgrace
In June 2007 the European
Parliament blasted Spain
for overdevelopment
around Madrid and on
thecostas. Referring to
“disastrous environmental,
historical and cultural
effects”, the EU body put
slack building laws,
unscrupulous developers
and bent politicians in the
dock. Weeks later the EU
also formally condemned
the so-called ‘land grab
law’ that had cheated
people of land in the
Valencia region in the
1990s. Landowners were
essentially forced to hand
over their property, which
was then passed on to
developers.
As of 2006 Spain was
building 800,000 new
houses a year, four times
the number in the UK.
As the Spanish housing
market ground to a
shuddering halt in 2007,
many were left empty and
unwanted.
