I have made mention on previous postings that we had bought and sold previously in Spain. Up to the fiasco with this development, I had always placed great faith in the Spanish legal system, sadly no longer. Many of you like me will have read the postings on the Las Alpujarras m/b and you could be asking why don't I just post there? Well I think the problems of El Zoco are a salutory lesson to anyone buying off plan in Spain, and before anyone comments, we do have a correct Spanish Contract, but with a clause that has been breached now.
We have written to Palmera Properties, they accept no responsibility. We have written to their legal dept. they accept no responsibility. We have written to the builder, we have had no reply. We have phoned the builder's lawyer, they have not returned our calls. So we then went down the final resort and sought the advice of a Spanish lawyer, namely the one recommended by this website.
We were told quite confidently after copying the lawyer with all the paperwork, that they, and I quote " have enough documentation for action and reimbursement of money plus interests" Excellent we thought, so we wrote back and asked how long it would take and how much? On 11/7/07 they told us that before starting court action they would contact the other parties to see if there is a possibility of an "an amicable settlement" out of court. We allowed several weeks to go by and having not heard anything we emailed again, and again, and again. In September we finally received an email. No attempt had been made to write to the other parties, and in fact we were simply sent an outline of the legal procedure and a request for 4000 euros (£2,800 at to-days rate) to fight the action.
Referring to the information I found and outlined in my previous posting, we can't even be confident the builder has assets enough to refund deposits, let alone start expensive action.
In reality, the Spanish lawyers won't even do so much as write a simple letter until we stupid Brits part with even more money. Don't they understand that many people have already spent a great deal of money to get to this sad stage. One would have thought that a simple effort to start the ball rolling could be made, without a demand for money, to at least give us some renewed confidence in the Spanish system.
Reading in to-days press regarding the probable decision by the Spanish Government to provide billions of euros towards the cost of bulldozing hundreds of properties, many of whom will have been bought by Brits, then sadly the answer to my question above is a definite NO, and we will never, ever consider or recommend anyone to invest in Spain again
This message was last edited by avf on 10/30/2007.