Marbella town hall has been ordered to pay almost €39 million over land it seized in 2003 to build San Pedro’s game-changing A-7 tunnel and boulevard.
Andalucia’s High Court ruled in favour of the current owners of three plots totalling 8,369 square metres, who had received no payment for the land, according to Malaga Hoy.
The ruling can still be appealed.
The land was taken during Julian Muñoz’s time as mayor, as authorities prepared to bury the main road through San Pedro and transform the area above it.
A regional valuation commission had assessed the plots at €2.6million. The court overturned that assessment, setting their value at €27.63 million, plus a statutory 5% supplement.
Compensation for temporary occupation and legal interest bring the total bill to almost €39 million.
That is equivalent to nearly 9% of Marbella’s €450million budget for 2026, or almost half its planned €85million infrastructure investment programme.
Two of the plots now form part of Avenida de Lyon, while the third lies beneath a section of Avenida del Mediterraneo, between Nueva Alcantara and Guadalmina.
The owners were represented by planning and compulsory purchase lawyers Juan Ramon and Pablo Fernandez-Canivell.
The San Pedro tunnel opened in 2012, nine years after the land was acquired. The roughly one-kilometre underpass was designed to remove traffic lights and ease persistent congestion on the coastal route.
The project cost more than €85million.
Traffic was expected to reach around 70,000 vehicles a day when it opened, but the route now carries more than 100,000 daily, with higher volumes in summer, according to the report.
Read more Andalucia news at the Spanish Eye.
