30,000 illegal homes in Málaga, only 16 demolitions

MÁLAGA – It has been calculated that there some 30,000 illegal homes built in the province. Many of them are on ‘non-buildable’ or ‘rústico’ land, or on river flood courses, and the sides and tops of mountains … Yet only a tiny proportion of them have been demolished, which is what the law mandates (restitution to its original state). This permissiveness is owed principally to the fact that there is no politician willing to assume the electoral costs of an unpopular measure. That, and the sluggish speed of justice in Spain. Of course, it’s Nature that loses out, as usual. The provincial Prosecutor//calculates that there were at least 16 demolitions 2013 as the result of having been built on non-buildable land and therefore considered as an offence against ‘territorial ordination’. This is more than can be said for previous years.

Language curiosity: a friendly foot will hold up your house

JIMENA (Cádiz) My house needs a pie de amigo with some urgency, or I might wake up in the chicken run next door one morning…  Yes, it needs a ‘friendly foot’, or ‘the foot of a friend’. You won’t find it easily in an ordinary dictionary (not even in my technical one, which had thus far never failed me), unless you know to look it up under contrafuerte, which translates to ‘abutment’, ‘buttress’ and even ‘stiffener’. On consultation, Jimena’s Town Architect, Juan Luis Callejo, said that pie de amigo has long been used with ‘lay people’ as an easy way to explain the thing. I like the idea of a friendly foot holding me up.