Jobs allure outweighs Spain’s preservation need

Valdevaqueros is a surfers’ paradise and a haven for rare wildlife, but the council has approved a huge new tourist complex in an attempt to bring jobs to the crisis-hit area Valdevaqueros is one of the last remaining unspoiled beaches in southern SpainFor decades it has been a world apart from the concrete-lined beaches of Torremolinos and Marbella along the coast, yet on May 29 the local council in Tarifa approved plans to build a tourist complex right next to the beach, with 1,400 hotel rooms and 350 flats.

Environmental and conservation groups have protested that the project will harm the habitats of protected species, but for most councillors here the issue is simple: jobs. In this town of 18,000 inhabitants, 2,600 are out of work as Spain faces its worst economic crisis in at least half a century, and one that has cast doubt on the future of the euro. “Traditional sources of income such as fishing are dying out, now that fleets are being dismantled and fish stocks are depleted, so tourism is the only way out, as long as it is sustainable,” said Sebastin Galindo, a councillor from the Socialist party, which is in opposition in Tarifa but voted with the governing People’s party to give the project the green light.

Tarifa’s mayor, Juan Andrs Gil, declined to comment on the project, but Galindo said it complies with environmental standards. The complex would be 800 metres from the coast, comfortably beyond the minimum of 200 metres stipulated in the landmark 1988 Coastal Law, drawn up to prevent more ugly developments springing up of the sort that blighted much of Spain’s coastline when mass tourism first descended on its shores in the 1960s and 1970s. He vowed to check developments closely, but admitted that the project may not get off the drawing board “in the current economic climate”.

Just yards from the corner cafe where Galindo spoke, idle cranes loom over blocks of flats that have lain unfinished or empty since a property bubble burst in 2008, swiftly turning Spain from the eurozone’s fastest-growing economy into one that may soon need a European bailout to help rescue its parlous public finances.

Opponents of the complex say the last thing anyone needs is more housing in a country that already has a million empty homes, although the central government last week proposed a sell-off by granting non-Spaniards residency permits in return for buying property worth at least 160,000 (129,460).

The Socialist opposition in Madrid slammed the proposal, and Galindo said it discriminated against migrant workers who flocked to Spain during the boom years, many of them from Morocco, whose coastline is just 14km away and can be seen from Tarifa. “It favours moneyed classes rather than those who came here to help Spain get ahead,” he said.

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“Money is once again being put before urban laws and European environmental directives,” said Ral Romeva, a member of the European Parliament who is vice-president of the Greens group. “European public interest in the Natura 2000 network is neither being applied nor safeguarded.”

In Romeva’s view, the project is also at fault because the proposed site has too little water in a town that already suffers from shortages in the summer weather that scorches the southern Spanish region of Andalusa.

Lack of water led the Andalusa supreme court last month to uphold an appeal filed by Ecologistas en Accin in 2005 against plans to build a complex called Merinos Norte elsewhere in the region which would have included golf courses, hotels and luxury homes.

Many locals are also wondering why a resort should be built 10km away, rather than on wasteland near Tarifa’s picturesque old centre, with its typically Andalusian whitewashed walls and winding streets, dominated by a 10th-century Moorish castle.

“My opinion and that of catering workers is that we agree [with the complex] as long as it creates jobs in the town, which is what is needed, but we are against it being for the benefit of a few,” said Cristbal Lobato, 45, who has waited on tables at the same beachside bar in Tarifa for 30 years.

“Anywhere else in Europe, this place would have the utmost protection, but here they want to get rid of it all and cover it with buildings,” he said, while peering through binoculars. “What they want to do is turn this into Benidorm, but what draws people here is wildlife and the wind.

“But by taking advantage of the current crisis and unemployment, builders and mayors who agree with them can justify any amount of destruction.”