Some details of the mega-project prepared by Salmantine entrepreneur Juan José Hidalgo in Estepona are still known after the sale of Air Europa to IAG for 500 million.
(Pepe Hidalgo’s new mega-project after the sale of Air Europa for 500 million)
In an interview with Andalucia Golf, he detailed that “there will be a large hotel, tourist apartments, a lake with artificial beach, residential area and sports area”.
To this will be added “large recording studios for TV series and accommodation for all filming personnel”.
For this alone, 300,000 square meters will be allocated.
A gigantic space will also be reserved for a sports zone that “will occupy 400,000 square meters”.
Hidalgo assures us that “you’ll have soccer pitches, tennis and paddle courts, indoor facilities, etc.” However, there are still issues to be resolved before the project begins, given that the estate has 1,500,000 square meters, and only 300,000, half tourist and half residential are approved.
What is clear is that the investment will be several million dollars.
Globalia’s president plans to spend around 1.2 billion euros.
His intention is “to start this year, and full implementation could be a reality in four or five years”.
With all this, his big goal is to make Estepona the “world city of sport”, by raising an urban planning megaproject on the Costa del Sol.
He would do so on the “Nadal Estate” (*see article below) , a plot of land he acquired in the early 2000s. The Nadal Legacy: The Nadal Legacy land, with which Estepona welcomed the dream of a university, remains trapped in an urban planning labyrinth.
An old woman who died from the frustration of not being able to study, a will that burned down during the civil war, heirs who died without descendants, a Church-linked company exercising a ruinous administration, the promise of a university never materialized, a bankrupt company amidst the euphoria that inflated the real estate bubble, expectations frustrated by the economic crisis, bank takeovers… The story of the Nadal legacy is a journey through a century of Spanish history that could well fuel a series whose denouement is still an unknown.
At the heart of the story is the frustration of a city whose expectations have never been fulfilled: that the legacy would become the basis and foundation of a university that would change Estepona’s destiny.
What is commonly referred to as the Nadal Legacy is in fact three different legacies that have had unequal luck.
The story begins on April 9, 1926, in the Valencian town of Onteniente, when Antonia Guerrero, a woman born in Estepona 78 years earlier, registered a will with the village notary, leaving her property to her nephews Carmen, José Antonio and Maria Catalina Nadal Guerrero.
The original protocol of this will did not survive the civil war.
What is commonly known as the Nadal Inheritance is in fact three different inheritances that have had unequal luck. The story begins on April 9, 1926, in the Valencian town of Onteniente, when Antonia Guerrero, a woman born in Estepona 78 years earlier, registered a will with the village notary, leaving her property to her nephews Carmen, José Antonio and Maria Catalina Nadal Guerrero.
The original protocol of this will did not survive the Civil War.
It was the focus of flames during the war.
The most important part of the estate consisted of properties and land belonging to the family, at the time barren land of little value that amounted to over 2.5 million square meters and today lies in the city’s expansion zone.
The three nephews died without issue and the last to die -Marie, who died in 1978- decided in her will to cede all her property to the church.
Those that came from the estate of her brother, Joseph, were to be used in a religious-charitable-teaching foundation to be called the José Nadal Foundation.
This entity, whose establishment and administration he entrusted to the parish priest of Estepona’s Los Remedios church, Manuel Sánchez Ariza, was to devote all social and religious assets to the benefit of people living in Estepona.
Likewise, any Estepona property that did not come from his brother’s estate was to be sold and distributed to various religious institutions.
Thirty percent of this amount would go to the parish of Los Remedios.
The bulk of this inheritance consisted of more than two and a half million square meters spread over five estates: Guadalobón, Caniquiqui, El Ángel, Arroyo Vaquero and El Ciprés.
For years, it looked as if all this heritage had been brought together for a single purpose, but when the parish priest of Los Remedios, Manuel Sánchez Ariza-a scholar and intellectual of the highest order, according to those who knew him-died, all the documentation I had patiently gathered over the years came to light.
The priest had found on the registration seat of an estate a reproduction of Maria Guerrero’s will, the original of which had been lost during the civil war.
The original had been lost during the Civil War, and the document was a pioneering statement for its time.
“Convinced the testatrix who, for lack of studies, could not fulfill in this world the mission God entrusted to her, because the woman did not have in her time the right to make a career, which was the greatest pain of her life, wants, now that this right is recognized, He establishes in Estepona a foundation to finance the studies of the poor women of this village, favoring the careers of Law and Philosophy and Letters”.
Perhaps as one of the first parity declarations in Spanish history, the old woman decided that the foundation supposed to materialize her decision should be composed of two men and two women: the mayor, the judge of first instance, the most senior national teacher and another woman appointed by her.
The discovery of this will gave rise to a partition of the inheritance.
On the one hand, Antonia Guerrero’s original estate, consisting of three estates totalling 36,2000 square metres, which became managed by the foundation that bears her name. This entity was created on May 9, 1996, in the spirit of its inspirer, to “facilitate access to university studies of all kinds, especially for the women of Estepona, through the establishment of grants, competitions, prizes, scholarships, assistance, promotion of study and training centers”.
This foundation is still in operation, with a majority of women in its patronage since the judiciary has not allowed the incorporation of a judge, and its patrimony intact.
Two plots totalling 31,2000 metres; housing and apartments worth almost six and a half million euros and a credit of a further eight million resulting from the disposal of other plots from the original estate.
All these assets are managed by the Antonia Guerrero Foundation, whose income is used primarily to award over a hundred scholarships to Estepona students.
The rest of the estate had a more complex history and a less happy ending.
Under Church control, the estate was subject to ruinous administration by the Copresa company, which took much of the land into the hands of the banks.
In 1998, it passed into private hands.
Tourist entrepreneur José Hidalgo bought the two and a half million meters from the Bishopric and Unicaja in a deal that was closed for almost 200 million euros.
With part of the proceeds from the deal, the Church built a joint college, the John XXIII, currently administered by another foundation after the demise of the original, called the Nadal Foundation.
Similarly, the training centers linked to the Church of Los Remedios and the Church of St. Joseph were also financed by part of these funds.
The Estepona Orchestra also owes its ownership of the municipal land to a soil exchange operation carried out on the original inherited land.
Since then, the history of the legacy, or what remains of it, has been a succession of unfulfilled expectations and frustrations.
In keeping with what was understood to be the original spirit of the legacy, Estepona Town Council linked the urban development of the land, in particular the El Ciprés estate, to the creation of a general university system.
However, neither this option nor the agreements with the University of Malaga and the Pontifical University of Salamanca came to fruition.
In 2005, the land situation became even more complicated.
Hidalgo sold 51% of the property to the Urbanizadora XXI entity, linked to a Rioja wine entrepreneur, who financed the deal with Banco Popular.
The company’s subsequent difficulties left control of the land in the hands of the financial institution, recently acquired by Banco de Santander.
From a town-planning point of view, the Nadal Estate lands are at an impasse.
The land is classified as non-sectorized urbanizable and faces an insoluble development problem.
Estepona has already reached the limit of growth marked by the POTA (Andalusian Territorial Development Plan), which sets a limit for the planning of new housing based on the number of inhabitants.
In the medium term, there is no development horizon.
The university itself remains a distant dream.
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