The inhabitants of the urbanization Les Planes del Rei accuse the Municipal Council of abandoned them.
Planes del Rei, urbanization located in municipality of Pratdip (Region of Baix Camp, province of Tarragona, Catalonia), no longer has public light for more than two years, constantly suffers from problems of drinking water supply and which, by municipal decision, no longer has a sewage treatment plant. The reason for all this, they say, is that the urbanization has still not been “received” by Pratdip City Council. The city council, meanwhile, maintains that as long as the urbanization will not be “received”, they will not be able to act.
In Catalonia, thousands of urbanizations are still not received by their municipality. In this case, they are managed by Collaborating Entities of Urban Development (ECU), a tool which, when it was created in the 1960s and 1970s, had to be temporary. The idea was that this would only work during the construction and adaptation of each urbanization and that, once completed, the entity would be dissolved and that it would be the city council that would resume urbanization and provide public services such as lighting, running water, garbage collection or street maintenance.
JORDI OLÀRIA GRAS
Urbanization waiting for reception
Urbanizations as Les Planes del Rei that have never been received but, in this case, in September 2017, the inhabitants obtained a conviction from the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) ordering the dissolution of the ECU. The TSJC felt that his life was expired. However, the dissolution is still not effective. In the municipal opposition of Pratdip are two advisers of Avança Pratdip (Avp), a party created in 2018 by inhabitants of Planes del Rei.
Oscar Serrano, spokesman for the training, explains that “two years ago and three months ago, a court declared that the ECU had to be dissolved and liquidated”. This liquidation has not yet taken place. very angry because the president of the Entity has disappeared and, as a result, still has not submitted the liquidation“. The mayor of the municipality, Joan Maria Rovira, declares that “the Entity is not completely dissolved because they have to complete the liquidation of all outstanding and disputed accounts, there are many owners who have not paid their part of the costs of urbanization “.
AvP (Avança Pratdip) was born to be stronger against the mayor after decades of calls for solutions to the problems of urbanization. They accuse the ECU of having colluded with the City Council to obstruct the reception of urbanization. On the contrary, the municipality says that “we are carrying out an urban redevelopment project. There is one already, but it needs to be updated, and then it has to be implemented by the cooperation system”.
The mayor added that “this will make it possible to list the parcels, to know what their surface is and, when this information will be updated in the Register of Cadastre, urban planning quotas will have to be applied. If this has not yet been achieved. is because they put obstacles”. Oscar Serrano y Glòria Moreno, AvP two advisers, however, argue that it is the lack of will of the previous municipal councils and the current municipal council that makes the project not registered, and that the document the mayor is talking about has been waiting for years.
JORDI OLÀRIA GRAS
More than two years without public lighting
“It’s been two years since we have no more light, not a single lamp works”, exclaims Oscar Serrano. The public services of the urbanizations that have not been received by the town halls are generally provided by the ECUs. As the ECU Planes del Rei has ceased operations but has not been definitively liquidated, the area has no one to provide these services. A situation that they suspect to be a joint action of the city council and the ECU.
“In fact, the streets are in complete darkness, we can not go out for a walk, or drop our garbage cans in containers,” they lament. Mayor Joan Maria Rovira says that, as the ECU has disappeared, “they stopped paying public lighting bills, which was in the name of the entity, and they were cut off electricity”. The public lighting system is not the only problem for which AvP and the inhabitants of Planes del Rei demand solutions.
JORDI OLÀRIA GRAS
Alert to the danger of water pollution
The Planes del Rei wastewater treatment plant also stopped working due to the disappearance of the ECU. This is an installation that was paid for by the inhabitants of the urbanization and who served their home. “The treatment plant treats the faecal waters of 420 houses but, being stopped, the water flows into the ravine, on the bed of the river Llastres and the cliff of the Dovi, and then continue its journey to the terms of Mont-roig del Camp and Hospitalet de l’Infant”, denounces Oscar Serrano.
“We reported it to the ACA (the Catalan Water Agency) 2 years and 3 months ago, but the ACA does not respond”. Consulted by TarragonaDigital, the ACA notes that the treatment plant “only cleans up part of the urbanization and that it did not have any official formal unloading authorization with the Agency”. According to them, “several inspections were carried out to note the poor state of the installations and the non-respect of the rejection parameters”.
AvP claims that the wastewater from the 420 houses in the urbanization dumped into the Llastres River could pollute water from a nearby well. The ACA maintains that “we have no evidence that nearby aquifers are contaminated or that surface captures have been affected, nor have we received any complaints about this”.
FREDERIC ZUCCHERETTI
Three treatment plants in 2022
“After more than 1150 years of history, Pratdip still has no treatment plant”, Oscar Serrano regrets. The mayor, he rettiaire these words: “As the treatment plant belongs to the urbanization, that it was not received, we can not do anything”. He also points out that “Pratdip, along with other villages in the Baix-Camp region, have been calling for the construction of new treatment plants at ACA for several years. The ACA is planning work towards 2022. Work had already planned in 2006 but it has fallen behind”.
The Agency confirms that it plans to build the Pratdip wastewater treatment plant in 2022, as well as Planes del Rei and Santa Marina, another urbanization of the municipality. Until then, the village wastewater is dumped into a system of old rafts; “The deposits accumulate and the liquid flows, but it is very precarious”, explains the mayor.
JORDI OLÀRIA GRAS
Problems of the distribution of running water.
With the absence of public lighting and the closure of the wastewater treatment plant, there are also problems with the distribution of running water. Glòria Moreno (AvP) explains that “we have tanks that have been working with pumps, that’s how it is since the construction of the urbanization (1964)”. When the ECU disappeared, these pumps were no longer controlled and the reservoirs have emptied, because they are very large, these reservoirs take a long time to fill up, and we have been cut regularly for two years now.
“The city council has made an estimate, we have to pay the sum of 50.000 euros so that they authorize the company that manages the distribution of the water to carry out the appropriate repairs, which means that we will pay twice”, criticizes Oscar Serrano. He recalls that “since 2010 a judgment says that it is the
municipality of Pratdip to take care to provide and invoice the water to each of these inhabitants”.
Glória Moreno adds, “not only the water, but all the minimum services must be taken care of by the municipal council”; She suspects, however, that the collusion between the ECU and the town hall led the city council, despite having to provide these services, still delegate them to the ECU, which caused the current problem. “The drinking water service is absolutely deficient and very expensive”, she says. According to the AvP, the price is 4 to 5 times higher than in the village of Pratdip.
JORDI OLÀRIA GRAS
A feeling of abandonment
The general feeling of the inhabitants of Planas del Rey is a feeling of abandonment. “The mayors who have succeeded each other and the current mayor insist that we are a private urbanization: Between 55 and 60% of the taxes of the municipal budget come from the inhabitants of Planes del Rei, but never a cent has been invested in our urbanization”. They denounce the fact that the subsidies that any municipality demands from higher institutions are granted according to the number of inhabitants of each village. “Here they are asking for the 800 houses that make up Pratdip and Planes del Rei, but only Pratdip benefits”.
For example, there are two bridges at both entrances of the urbanization. “It is two bridges are 1.50m above the brook. Fifteen years ago, they were declared a flood zone and since then nothing has been done”. The mayor, Joan Maria Rovira, admits “that in Planes del Rei there are many problems and the inhabitants have to make a series of important reforms. But as the urbanization has not been received, the city council can not act”.
He quotes again the urban planning project to register. “Once it is registered, we will begin to do some work, and when all the services are adapted, the urbanization will be received, but for the moment, the municipality can not act because, unfortunately, this is not the case”. For the residents of the urbanization, it is a situation due to a lack of political will.
A situation that is repeated throughout the country
AvP accuses the city council, not just the current municipal council, of collaborating with the ECU to prevent the problems being solved and to prolong the situation without taking any action. The same desire that led them, in 2015, to found the Avança Pratdip party to strengthen their determination to find solutions, led them to build a network throughout Catalonia.
They explain that they are in contact with dozens of other urbanizations that are in similar situations. The objective is to promote, since Planes del Rei, a common front to maintain the pressure on each municipal council and also to make their voice heard in the Parliament of Catalonia. It is indeed the Catalan Chamber that could update the existing law to solve a widespread problem.
By Jordi Olària Gras
Pictures: Jordi Olària Gras, Frederic Zuccheretti
Meilleur article sur la problématique de notre urbanisation et des autres urbanisations en Catalogne.
Le journaliste fait le constat d’une situation mais ne dénonce pas que la Mairie, la Genralitat, et l’Etat Espagnol, s’appuyant sur une loi incomplète et non contraignante, ont tout intérêt à ce que les choses restent comme elle sont. En effet, ils encaissent des impôts IBI et des subventions grâce aux habitants de ces urbanisations, lesdits impôts et subventions ne profitant qu’aux villages d’autochtone.
La loi a été faite pour que nous remplissions les caisses du budget municipal, ce qui intéresse l’Etat car il n’a pas à mettre la main à la poche. La Mairie, elle, a tout intérêt de ne pas nous intégrer et à nous laisser le plus longtemps possible dans cette situation pour continuer à percevoir seul cette manne financière.
La bonne nouvelle c’est que cet après midi j’ai eu un entretien avec le maire de la commune de Valencienne qui a été dans le même cas de figure et m’a assuré que nous pouvons obliger la Mairie à nous donner les services minimums et nous intégrer à moindre cout à condition que nous fassions les travaux manquants aux normatives de l’année ou a été accordé le permis d’urbaniser (1964).
Frederic Zuccheretti
