According to a ruling by the Territorial Court of Albacete, La Manga belongs, by full right, to Tomás Maestre Aznar and, consequently, access to its public beaches can only be made through land he owns, which he can control at his discretion.

The ruling sparked a major national controversy, since it was judicially recognized —and implicitly accepted— that in Spain, public beaches could be of “non-public access” when located within private estates bordering the sea, if the only way to reach them was by crossing private property.

To prevent this situation, the Ministry of Public Works was advised to build roads linking these places to others that were accessible; or to encourage residents to take action before their local councils so that these would assume control of private roads and convert them into public access routes.

Surprisingly, the following year the MOPU found invaluable allies: landowners in La Manga not linked to Tomás Maestre, who had seen how the regional administration had prohibited all new construction in order to put an end to…

“…the real estate–speculative voracities degrading both the landscape and the very tourist and living quality of La Manga…”

…offering ownership of their land to the State in exchange for being allowed to build at the edge of the beach or even over the sea.

All of this took place within the incredible tension generated by the imminent new Coastal Law and the impact it would have on the construction business (though not on Tourism) along the coast.