For the moment, there is no “amnesty”, neither for the chalet of Monica Garcianor for any of the 700 people who own a house in the Camorritos neighborhood, once home to personalities such as Emilio Botín or the Koplowitz sistersin the Madrid town of Cercedilla. Around 90 chalets and about 400 apartments These cover more than 80 hectares of public forest. And it is this last aspect that has caused the house of 2,000 square meters where the Minister of Health has spent her holidays since her childhood – she was a regular on the ski slopes of Puerto de Navacerrada – is in an irregular situation.
As municipal sources from this Madrid town explained to LA RAZÓN, the land on which the colony was built, which dates back to the early 1920s, had a temporary concession of occupation. in the public mountain for 99 years. A measure granted at the time with the aim of constructing buildings to attract people from the capital and boost the local economy. After that time, the land had to become the property of the City Council. And the deadline was met. It was in March 2019the year from which the City Council was authorized to proceed with the eviction of the residents.
However, time has passed five years since then. As the cited sources explain, although the City Council is able to carry out the eviction, two factors must be taken into account: first, the flood of allegations from hundreds of those affectedwhich are having to be resolved one by one with limited municipal resources; and second, the coincidence of the end of the concession with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemicwhich led to a slowdown in the process of issuing these types of processes.
In any case, Mónica García’s allegations have already been heard. The Minister of Health sent a letter to the Community of Madrid – the managing body of the area, as it is a public utility mountain – with 22 points of allegations to delay the administrative procedure and not hand over the property to the Cercedilla City Council. These allegations were rejected by the Regional Government’s Department of Environment, Housing and Agriculture, which considered the points raised by the minister as “unnecessary, inappropriate and irrelevant”, as reported by «El Debate» last November.
The Natural Resources Management Plan for the Sierra de Guadarrama is inflexible: the Camorritos land is located on “non-urbanizable protected land”, so there would be no room for new concessions or extensions. The solution, according to Cercedilla, can only be eviction. “It is totally forbidden to build chalets on a mountain of public use,” they emphasize.
Independents and PSOE
The same sources say that in the coming months the Community of Madrid could declare a “definitive expiration” of the concession, thus speeding up the process. In any case, they underline the enormous difficulties, especially for the Cercedilla City Council – currently governed by the Independent Group of Cercedilla and supported by the local PSOE– when it comes to reestablishing legality on the Camorritos land. To begin with, the flood of lawsuits that the Council would foreseeably have to face once the eviction was carried out.
In fact, The City Council has the right to impose coercive fines for up to five percent of the value of the occupied property if the occupants do not comply with the eviction request. In addition, since the end of the concession, both the Community of Madrid and the City Council could financially sanction the residents, something that, for the moment, has not been reported to have happened.
The last word on Mónica García’s chalet is still to be written. The law cannot be stopped and the process continues. And the town, with just 7,000 inhabitants, is preparing to face a legal battle of proportions far beyond its size.