A week ago, the draft draft law for the planning and protection of the Valencian coast was put on public display, a text that mortally wounds the coastal protection plan in force, the Pativel, approved in 2018 by the Consell del Botànic to preserve the last hectares of undeveloped coastline that escaped decades of urban pressure. The text reduces the installation of hotels on undeveloped land to 200 meters from the sea shore and allows new residential areas from 500 meters away. It also allows recreational activities on non-developable land on the coast and opens the way to the consolidation of illegal maritime settlements in the maritime-terrestrial domain, under state jurisdiction. “We want to develop our regional competence to protect private property and different commercial activities, but also defend and protect our beaches,” justified the Valencian president Carlos Mazón a few days ago after meeting with those affected by the Coastal Law in the middle of the electoral campaign at European.
The future norm, in the allegations phase for a month, has not yet been approved by the Consell so the processing is in a very early phase but the opposition groups have raised the alarm after a first reading. The previous autonomous government of Botànic approved the Pativel in May 2018 to protect some 7,500 hectares of land from the urban voracity of a time when at wedding banquets people chanted “Long live the PAI (Integrated Action Plan)” for the huge benefits derived from intense urbanization of the territory. The Pativel returned to rustic what had previously been drawn in the general municipal plans as urbanizable, protecting thousands of hectares of coastline. In fact, as a result of Pativel, the urbanization of more than five million square meters of land was avoided after the expiration of several PAIs projected in the 1,000-meter strip of coastline.
The Pativel allowed in the first 500 meters from the coastline to the interior only some type of facility (camping or hotel) of very limited height and surface, sustainable and integrated into the landscape. And only from 1,000 onwards were residential uses allowed. However, an affected company appealed the plan to the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJCV), which ended up upholding the appeal, although the Supreme Court later validated the plan in force today.
“We also believe that they may be considering amnesty for the illegal housing clusters on the coast of Nules, Denia…”, says socialist deputy María José Salvador, former Minister of the Environment with the Botànic and architect of the Pativel. Article 17 of the law states that a city council may ask the Generalitat to declare houses or businesses that are in the maritime-terrestrial domain, that is, on the beach, urban centers with special ethnological values, to consolidate them. And related to this point is the third additional provision, which says that all those spaces that, according to the Coastal Law of 1988, had the condition of being developable but were not, could now be developed. “That looks a lot like an amnesty,” says Salvador. Finally, article 43 of the draft refers to the authorizations and concessions of the maritime-terrestrial public domain and its easement area “will be granted by the Generalitat.” “This requires the prior transfer of management powers of the General State Administration,” warns the socialist.
“It is a return to the past, to the policies and urban pressure that the PP developed and exercised during the 20 years of its government. And it deals a death blow to a fundamental instrument for the active preservation of the coastline such as the Pativel. Furthermore, it is at the opposite end of what coastal legislation to combat climate change should be,” denounces Salvador, who insists that all the signs point to the fact that the draft bill may “violate essential aspects of the Coastal Law.” state” and end up being appealed in the Constitutional Court.
Paula Espinosa, Compromís deputy, adds that “the misnamed” coastal planning law tries to appeal to the uniqueness of the Valencian coast but what it does is “unprotect” it, in addition to colliding with European directives to combat climate change, and state laws such as the Coastal Law or the Environmental Assessment Law. “The Pativel put us at the forefront in protecting the coast, taking into account how badly abused it has been historically, and now they want to empty it,” warns the parliamentarian.
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Antonio Montiel, associate professor of Political Sciences and Administration at the University of Valencia, observes a change in model in the preliminary project: “There is an effort, without any scientific basis, to increase residential and tourist pressure on the coast, ignoring considerations about the fragility of the coast and the effects of climate change, which is mentioned up to 16 times but in a purely rhetorical way,” he considers.
Montiel adds that the reduction of distances and protections of the coast shows “the pure interest of attracting investments at the expense of occupying public space, privatizing it” and considers that “false expectations” are generated about the possible legalization of construction centers at the foot of beach. According to his analysis, the law also does not articulate real measures to protect the coast because when it talks about negative effects, such as the regression of the coastline, they specify that the State must take care of that. And he warns: “Although it could be applied [la ley], is very poorly written, in very confusing terms and very difficult to carry out. The application of the law will not be easy or peaceful.”
For Joaquín Farídos, professor of Regional Geographic Analysis at the University of Valencia, the draft law is prepared to remove legal force from Pativel. And he is surprised that some of the arguments of the Valencian draft to consolidate houses and businesses on the beach are based on the experience of the Galician coast planning law. [recurrida por posible invasión de competencias del Estado y recién avalada por el Constitucional]. The Valencian case is not comparable because we do not have the same nature of coasts nor do we have many towns that are close to the sea because they live from fishing, shipyards or shellfish harvesting, the expert clarifies.
For the geographer, the return to the zoning or classification of soils (protected, recoverable and non-recoverable) of the preliminary project entails a loss of the overall vision of the territorial system, which is what the Pativel intended to articulate. A concept that also includes the Spanish strategy and that of the European Union. Finally, Farídos sees “a certain latent conflict regarding the use or inter-administrative coordination that can be made regarding certain powers.”
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