Jun 19
ILLEGAL PROPERTIES IN MALLORCA

If you own an illegal property in Mallorca, now anyone may report you

ILLEGAL PROPERTIES IN MALLORCA

The owners of illegal properties in Mallorca have a new enemy. Until recently it was necessary to identify oneself in order to denounce. From February 2019 anyone can file a complaint without identifying themselves.

That is why it is ESSENTIAL to make sure of the legality of the property you are going to buy before signing any document that commits you. (And don’t expect vendor or the agent paid by him/her will tell you the true).

As published in Ultima Hora newspaper in April 19th (read it here in local newspaper), the Consell (government of Mallorca) has received 46 anonymous complaints in two months for illegal works in rustic.

In just two months, the Agència de Defensa del Territori (ADT) has received 46 communications or anonymous denunciations for alleged illegal works. This figure contrasts with the one hundred formal complaints received throughout 2017.

The possibility of filing complaints with the ADT without the obligation to provide the name was introduced at the end of February. Previously, the Agency only admitted formal complaints, in which the complainant was obliged to provide his or her identity.

These 46 anonymous complaints were received between the end of February and last Friday. However, most of them, 26, were processed within the first two weeks of the service’s operation.

Priority

There are differences between formal and anonymous complaints. The former, in which the complainant is obliged by law to provide his or her name and surname and ID number, are processed “with priority” over the latter, which do not have the legal status of complaints. The ADT does not even refer to them as “complaints” but rather as “communications” that can be processed from its “Citizen Collaboration Portal”.

This website, which can be accessed from the ADT’s digital platform, contains a form in which the complainant is only asked for an e-mail address; the plot number, the industrial estate and the municipality in which the alleged infringement was committed, the type of construction erected without permission (if it is a house, an agricultural building, a swimming pool, etc.) and photographs of the irregularity.

Mercedes Garrido, insular consellera of Territori i Infraestructures and political responsible of the ADT, made a “positive” balance of the new service. “It must be borne in mind that the ADT is already competent in all the protected rustic land and in more than half of the municipalities of Mallorca. In this sense, citizen collaboration always comes in handy and helps the detection of infractions, since it is impossible to have enough inspectors to reach all sites.

On the other hand, Mercedes Garrido recalled that the Agència de Defensa del Territori de Mallorca was “the only agency of this type” that still did not offer the possibility of making anonymous complaints.

It must be remembered that the ADT only has jurisdiction in rustic land and, in certain circumstances, in urban land. Created in 2009, the Agency was virtually inactive until 2015, when the new government of the Consell de Mallorca amended its statutes and gave it more staff, among other actions, with the desire to boost its operation.

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