A perspective of Cala Mosca in Orihuela (Alicante) taken this week.JOAQUIN DE HARO RODRIGUEZ
The process of disappearing the last intact beach in the extreme south of the province of Alicante begins its countdown. The developer company Gomendio already has all the favorable administrative reports to build more than 2,200 houses in the area of Cala Mosca (Orihuela) on what is known in the city of Alicante as the last kilometer of unspoilt coastline in its municipal area, has met with a great deal of societal rejection , but with all papers in order. In order to avoid this, the Mayor of Orihuela since April, Carolina Gracia (PSOE), presented this week the proposal to create a negotiating table that would unite the parties with municipal representation, the Generalitat and the construction company to use political means, as virgin in the 30 years of existence of the urban plan as the territory it tries to defend, possible alternatives so that the natural environment does not disappear between layers of concrete.
The Alameda del Mar project, the Urbanization Cala Mosca designed by the construction company, was born in the mid-1990s when the City Council, then chaired by Mayor Luis Fernando Cartagena (PP), changed the classification of the land between Cabo Peñas and Playa Flamenca, two Mainstays of the Orihuela coast are located 30 kilometers from the city center. The idea is to build more than 2,200 apartments on a 240,000 square meter plot of land by the sea. The various administrative procedures expanded the plan until, in 2007, another popular mayor, Mónica Lorente, introduced an amendment to the partial city plan that put the machines on the beach for the first time.
The Tudorella mauretanica snail and the cat’s head jarilla plant found in Cala MoscaA. FAQ
Three years later, the Claro political party, an independent group formed by citizens of Orihuela Costa, collected 7,000 signatures against urbanization and handed them over to Brussels. Europe is paralyzing the project to ensure procedures are followed to protect the environment and protect two endangered species, the Tudorella mauretanica snail, a mollusc, and the cat’s-head jarilla (Helianthemum caput-felis), a plant with yellow flowers . The two great protagonists of this story.
The comings and goings in the offices and courts have been constant since 2010, and Gomendio always emerges elegantly from a legal dispute. But the key is permanently anchored in securing the little snail and the wild plant. On July 19, the promoter of urbanization managed to eliminate all administrative, social and political rivals. The General Directorate of Quality and Environmental Education of the Generalitat Valenciana dictates a resolution declaring the fulfillment of the conditions related to an effective protection of the two protected species after the modification of the project.
“This positive decision is the final step towards the City Council’s final approval of the modification of the urbanization project and will allow the resumption of works that were paralyzed in 2007,” assures the developer. In order to obtain the approval of the Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development, Climate Crisis and Ecological Transition, headed by Mireia Mollà (Compromís), Gomendio gave the administration 60,000 square meters of coastline to protect the cat’s head jarilla. It also undertakes to transform and design access points, to erect a fence to prevent vehicle, human or animal access and to set up a wildlife reserve to ensure the conservation of the snail population.
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With the Generalitat’s positive opinion, the diggers in the band warm up. “Following the decision of the ministry,” admits the mayor, “the administrative file continues its course.” “The company has announced that it will register the urbanization project for the area,” he explains, “and then the technical report will be prepared and discussed in the municipal plenary.” Gracia claims that the political negotiation with the construction company is the only way to “offer alternatives so that virgin space does not disappear”. “Orihuela is big and there is a solution,” he says. “We want to adjust the right acquired by the company to build the urbanization in another area of the municipal tenure,” says the mayor. Without having been specified in writing, the alternative is to offer economic compensation, which according to Gracia “would have to be settled with other administrations”, or to exchange the property with others distributed by the municipality. The construction company, which has already received an invitation to sit at the negotiating table, makes its presence conditional on the completion of these offers.
Aerial view of Cala Mosca, in a picture from the internet we save Cala Mosca.
The meeting proposed by the mayor in Cala Mosca is one of the agreements that managed to get the PSOE and Ciudadanos to get the support of Cambiemos (the Podemos brand in Orihuela) and to implement the motion of no-confidence with which they rejected the PP came into office last April. María García Sandoval, second deputy mayor and councilor of Cambiemos, says after her community group filed several complaints against the “unsuccessful” plan, the meeting is the final nail in “stating, to try to take a step towards the Criteria to stop or change’ that moves the process forward and that finally ‘the use of the land can be changed to become a protected green space’. For García Sandoval, the Alameda del Mar plan is an “environmental attack” that would further hit the Orihuela coast, “which supports brutal urban pressures” and whose population triples in the summer.
The Councilor for Urban Development, José Aix (Citizen), comments that “the meeting is a good initiative but lacks the willingness of all parties to reach an agreement”. “We have to examine alternatives, but anything that is to be done must have all the legal and environmental guarantees,” says Aix, who was already a member of the city government when the PP ruled. “If no agreement is reached after the technical report, then we must approve the project because it contains all the positive reports,” he concedes, “and we must hope that it will at least have a positive impact on the job and the economy.” The popular ex-mayor Emilio Bascuñana, for his part, describes the proposal as “not very serious”. Despite the fact that his party has always been the one that facilitated the planning of the urbanization of Cala Mosca, he wonders “who wouldn’t want an area like this to remain virgin”. But “there are rules and laws that must be observed, otherwise the crime of subterfuge would arise,” he warns. He also warns that, in his opinion, in Orihuela “there is no possibility of exchange, not even remotely so” and that covering the cost of compensation would be “nonsense” unless the Generalitat or the state would pay for it.
Cala Mosca Land near which 2,200 homes are to be built.JOAQUIN DE HARO RODRIGUEZ
The main stakeholders, the users of the natural bays, are not invited to the negotiation meeting. Ángel Barceló usually “seeks” “tranquility” on this “natural coast with transparent waters, with little accessibility and where there are no mass arrivals of bathers”, with areas where nudism is practiced and where there is a beach for dogs. “If it were built, both options would be lost,” he laments. Barceló is secretary of the Save Cala Mosca association, which fights for the preservation of the natural environment and “represents the social rejection of building”. The construction company’s initial moves tattooed the demarcation of seafront sidewalks and “installed electrical distribution transformation centers which were looted at the beginning and which are now abandoned, being destroyed” and occasionally serve as shelters for people who occupy them. .
The members of the association predict that “just driving through the machines will affect the environment”, which will continue to threaten the two protected species, and with them others such as “the Betic lizard, the kestrels that nest on the cliffs or the common Hedgehog”. But they are also convinced that since the Consistory, the coast has been “saturated”, “poor” and “always left out”. According to Barceló, “in terms of waste water management, the treatment plant is not designed to deal with the overcrowding of the Coast with 2,200 other households to deal with.In addition, in Orihuela Costa, “the maintenance of the gardens is very poor, such as the urban transport is poor, long and does not respect timetables. “We are demanding to stop respecting the landscape quality that Infrastructures no longer give of their own accord,” he judges.
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