Tumbledown convent spat

CAMPELLO town hall is unlikely to get back the €80,000 it spent on shoring up the Convent dels Frares Mercedaris.
The abandoned Mercedarian Friars convent is privately owned, but in 2019 the town hall paid out this amount to prevent the 400-year-old building from collapsing.
Responding to Esquerra Unida (EU) councillor, Pedro Mario Pardo, at the last plenary council meeting, Campello’s mayor Juanjo Berenguer explained that the Heritage department, which he also heads, wants to locate the owners of the convent.
“But there is no way of finding them,” Berenguer admitted.
The mayor also said that the issue was “very complex” as the building has multiple owners, owing to Spain’s inheritance laws.
“From what I’ve been told, we are not going to locate them,” he told Pardo, adding that the town hall departments involved could not pursue the owners “because we do not know them.”
The EU councillor maintained that the town hall was obliged to comply with the edict reclaiming the money that was issued at the time of the repairs.
“If nothing is done, EU will go to the regional government’s Culture department, without ruling out other legal steps,” Pardo warned.