An Austrian mother and her daughter were arrested by police after trying to stop developers building holiday flats on their land in Spain.
The Wesenauer family bought their finca in Campoamor in 1996, believing they owned all of the surrounding land under the original title deeds.
However, four years later they were told they could lose a large part of their land under Valencian LRAU planning laws.
The legislation allowed builders to take land for the development of tourism if it was deemed to be in the “community interest”.
The EU subsequently ruled the planning laws were illegal, forcing the local government to rescind the legislation.
Despite this, developers have continued to push ahead with their redevelopment plans on the Wesenauer’s land, leading the family to claim they are “victims of an extinct law”.
Nine homes along with a number of swimming pools will now be built in their former garden.
Kimberley Wesenauer and her daughter Love staged a desperate last ditch attempt on Monday to stop the builders.
Mrs Wesenauer fell screaming to the ground, while her daughter attempted to get under one of the diggers.
Both were arrested and handcuffed by police at the scene, before being taken to the Guardia Civil barracks in Pilar de la Horadada.
The Valencian government passed the LRAU planning legislation back in 1994, which critics later dubbed the “land grab law”.
The idea behind the new legislation was to speed up urban development. However the law was badly drafted, allowing abuses by unscrupulous developers.
The modified planning laws allowed developers to ask that land be reclassified from rural to urban without the owners’ permission.
Many property owners were forced to sell under compulsory purchase orders at prices far below commercial values.
To add insult to injury, some property owners then received huge bills for the development.
The Wesenauers sent a petition to the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office in the early hours of Monday and are awaiting a response.
