Spain Buys Up Coast to Halt Concrete Creep

Spain's socialist government has begun protecting vulnerable spots on the country's overdeveloped coastline, by forcing owners to sell threatened land to the state at market prices.

In a move that imitates the purchase of Amazon rainforest and other threatened areas by charities, the government is issuing expropriation orders while negotiating prices with 50 landowners on Spain's concrete-threatened coast. A fighting fund of €60m (£40m) has been set aside, which the government hopes to use to buy 8,000 hectares (19,800 acres) of land. Among the first areas to be bought is a campsite on cliffs above a pristine beach in the northern region of Asturias.

The narrow peninsula on which the campsite at Candás has sat for three decades is being taken from the owner and its buildings are to be demolished.

"The coastline has to be protected," José Fernández, the ministry official in charge of the project, told El País newspaper yesterday. "It is under threat from both rising sea levels caused by global warming and from construction."

Environment ministry officials said they were targeting 50 properties, but that there were a further 140 on their wishlist. "We add one or two new targets to the list every week," a spokesman said. None contained completed hotels or holiday homes, but smaller buildings might be bulldozed, he said.

One site the ministry will issue an expropriation order for is the Algarrobico beach in the south-western region of Almería, where ecologists are fighting the construction of a huge hotel complex. Regional authorities have moved in to buy the land for €2.3m, but the environment ministry says it will bid for it, just to ensure the half-built hotel is demolished.

Concrete lines almost two-thirds of the coastline in the southern region of Andalucia, which includes the Costa del Sol and Almería, according to Greenpeace.

Expropriation orders are being issued under Spain's 1988 law of coasts, which successive governments have declined to use. This establishes there can be no building within 100 metres of the high-tide mark. Anything built before 1988 within that limit is liable to be knocked down in the next 30 years. Officials say rising sea levels owing to global warming may bring new land into the law's remit. Lawyers say, however, that the government may have trouble forcing expropriation orders on those who decide to fight.