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The Valencian government had decided ex-pats were fat cats who should be squeezed. The earliest example was that those with large plots of land were advised that they only needed 1,500 to 2,000 sq m – many in semi-rural areas had 6,000 to 8,000 sq m plots. So, the government compulsorily acquired what they saw as excess without compensation, then, to add insult to injury they would set out the land grabbed for new plots, and insisted the original owner had to pay for mains services to be supplied to these, and in some cases pay for roads and pavements.
Further, small developments outside of urbanisations, were able to be marked by the local government for upgrades to mains services by a developer turning up at the ayuntamiento and offering to deliver these utilities. The developer would then knock on the villa doors and present a large bill as a percentage of their proposed costs. Some older Brit ex-pats were on fixed incomes and a sudden demand for many thousands of euros, for something they had not wanted or requested, was pretty devastating.
The process evolved and larger developers could come up with a plan for say a shopping area, get local government approval for it, and if your villa was unfortunate enough to be where they planned to build it, you were given notice to quit and the villa was demolished with meagre compensation.
The choice of a villa on an adopted urbanisation helped avoid most of these problems.
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