Mijas town hall to rescue 96 unfinished residential developments from 'legal limbo'

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In two months, a new municipal bylaw will allow the local council to take over these private residential complexes

José Carlos García

Mijas

Thursday, 9 April 2026, 11:11

Mijas town hall has launched a major initiative to rescue 96 residential areas from a "legal limbo," but the move could see an unknown number of private communities lose their swimming pools.

Under a new bylaw, the council will assume ownership of land within these "historical" developments to finish construction and bring infrastructure up to modern standards.

However, councillor for economy and finance Mario Bravo has warned that this process involves a strict audit of original site plans, putting any unauthorised amenities at risk.

In some cases, homeowners' associations have installed swimming pools on land originally designated as public green space.

Bravo stated that where a pool exists where "something else should be," the council will face a choice: the structure must either be demolished or, if the law allows, legalised through the payment of a significant fee by the residents.

This assessment will form part of a wider effort to resolve the "grey area" surrounding these developments, where one in three Mijas residents currently live.

The state of these areas varies significantly: some remain under construction, others lack basic sanitation networks.

To facilitate the takeover, the council has designated these areas as "historical", a status applied to developments over ten years old that are at least 75 per cent complete.

The primary objective, according to Bravo, is "to bring these areas out of the grey zone."

These residential areas are open, allowing any person to walk or drive through them, but on paper they are private property. Their public use obliges the town hall to provide services such as street lighting.

But whenever these areas need more work - for example road resurfacing - the municipal auditor raises an objection, given that public money would, in practice, go towards a road that is not officially public.

Bravo acknowledges that "there are more and more problems" in these developments, which is why the local ruling team has decided to address the status of these developments through a legal document.

The aim is to provide clarity on management matters such as when a person's vehicles suffers damage due to the condition of the street or a fallen lamppost.

Assess the state of these developments

"There were two problems: the legality of the developments, which the Andalusian law for territorial sustainability solved, and now there is the issue of the land, which we solved with the bylaw that asigns it to the town hall," Bravo says.

The town hall will initiate a process to assess the state of the 96 partially developed areas.

Bravo said: "There are residential developments built in the 1960s that were authorised without proper sanitation, something that wouldn't be possible now. Some are unfinished, in other cases there are outstanding guarantees that will have to be enforced. We'll have to compare what the original partial development plan said about each of them with what exists today.

"If there's no sewerage, it will have to be installed and we'll have to determine what portion the residents will pay for and what portion the town hall will pay for.