BENIDORM council has approved a deal to stave off possible bankruptcy over a land compensation award.

€283 million plus interest was granted by the Valencian Supreme Court in May 2024 to the Murcia Puchades family over the loss of building rights in the protected Serra Gelada Natural Park.

The total due is now around €350 million, but with interest, the value of the payout could reach €500 million over 30 years.

SERRA GELADA, BENIDORM

Murcia Puchades sent a letter on Monday backing a cash and land agreement with the council, which was then supported at Tuesday’s plenary meeting.

Benidorm City Council has emphasised that the agreement will mean no cuts to services or increases in local taxes, in addition to stabilising the authority’s budgets for the foreseeable future.

The Murcia Puchades family had three plots totalling over two million square metres in the Serra Gelada

Their legal action started after Benidorm City Council voided urban planning agreements signed in 2003 between then-mayor, Vicente Perez Devesa and several companies.

The first payment will be €60 million before the end of the year out of council coffers with €55 million of it coming from the government’s Economic Impulse Fund.

COUNCILLOR CASELLES

Council spokesperson, Lourdes Caselles, said that once the first transfer is made, Benidorm will only have to pay interest on the remainder of the sum until the end of 2030.

At that point, repayments will resume annually which will not be less than 8% of the current municipal income- estimated at around €7.25 million.

The Murcia Puchades agreement also involves transferring municipal land to them to cover over €67 million in interest on the €283 million award.

That element has to happen within five years, and further payments via land transfers to cut the debt are anticipated.
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A CAREGIVER has fled Spain after organising a home robbery of her elderly client at his Sant Joan d’Alacant home.

Five people helped to clear out his safe while the victim- in his eighties- was in hospital.

Jewellery and gold bars valued at over €100,000 were stolen.

GUARDIA CIVIL INVESTIGATION

Five participants in the crime- all of Honduran nationality- have been arrested by the Guardia Civil, but the carer managed to flee Spain on a flight to Honduras.

The Guardia said that steps were being taken to locate the fugitive.

The heist happened in early December after the home owner- of undisclosed nationality- was admitted to hospital in Sant Joan d’Alacant.

The following day, the carer set the wheels in motion to carry out the robbery after telling a friend she had the keys to the old man’s home which had a safe inside.

SANT JOAN HOSPITAL

The caregiver, the friend and a third woman went to the property but were unable to open the safe.

The husband of one of the trio was brought into the plot by helping to carry out the large safe into his car and then taking it to his Alicante home.

Once inside, the safe was opened with the help of another man.

Some of the jewellery was then sold by a third man in pawn shops around Alicante province, while the gold bars were traded on the black market.

Days after the robbery, the elderly client asked the carer to bring him a ring that he had taken off before going to hospital.

The woman said she could not find it, creating suspicion in man’s mind since he knew where exactly left it.

An argument took place and he decided to sack her- asking for her to leave and to hand back the house keys.

He subsequently discovered the safe had gone missing from a cupboard and told his daughter what had happened.

Before a complaint was filed with the Guardia Civil, the carer had flown out of Spain.

Officers did manage to recover some of the jewellery from pawn shops and the five arrests were executed in the Sant Joan area in mid-February.

Two of the detainees were even wearing gold bracelets stolen from the victim.
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