Condemnation for ‘Francoist privileges’ in Javea, Costa Blanca

RUBEN MARTINEZ DALMAU, one of the Generalitat’s vice-presidents, called for an end to “Francoist privileges” on Javea’s coastline. Martinez Dalmau, who also heads the regional government’s housing, architecture and bioclimate department, was referring to the Javea villa built in the 1960s by Mariano Navarro Rubio. Hacienda (treasury) minister between 1957 and 1965 and later governor of the Bank of Spain, he built a villa on a First Century archaeological site at Punta de l’Arenal which also encroached on the maritime-terrestrial strip of publicly-owned shoreline.
It is now very deteriorated and shored up in places, while the swimming pools, which Navarro Rubio had built over a Roman fish farm, were badly affected by Storm Gloria last month. The villa is an aberration, Martinez Dalmau complained recently on social media, although it will remain in the hands of the former minister’s heirs until 2089, after Mariano Rajoy’s government amended the coastal laws in 2014.