 Semi Legal House Albox
We have a semi legal house it now appears. We bought back in 2005 and all seemed fine. The lawyer said everything was perfect, we asked him to do all checks to make sure it was legal. We went ahead and signed in July 2005, got water connected, did not have an electricity contract but were fobbed off with the excuse that the development was still on builders supply until all the houses were completed.
We bought through a small developer, our Spanish neighbours, who we did not think would do the dirty on us as they live 200 metres up the road. How wrong we were.
In July 2006, they asked us for money for the electricity connection, but this was not going to get us a contract. We said we would pay consumption costs if they could provide proof from the electricity company, rates, dates etc. They refused and so we refused to pay them. They then said they had paid for a transformer on their land and have a "private agreement" with the company, so the electricity was theirs. That was news to us, it was sold with mains connected - may be it was in a very loose kind of way. We still refused and they shinned up the pole and cut us off. The electricity company will not confirm one way or another if they have an agreement - all requests for an investigation have been met with silence, even after taking the details and getting a different solicitor involved.
We then investigated more and found that we had no license of first occupation; the developer had got a catastral record saying the land was urban, when in the PGOU (we now know) it is rural estate. So locally we are illegal although we are paying IBI urbana. We have a Spanish mortgage as we have a registered escritura and are considered the legal owners. Bizarre!
Where do we go from here? It seems the developer our neighbour has committed a fraud but we dont know how to proceed. We have been told that any case we bring to annul the purchase contract would only have a 50% chance of success as the land classification would have been deemed public knowledge. We asked our original lawyer to double, triple check all legalities and he obviously didn't. We seem stuck half way between legal and not. We are now living back in the Uk with our 2 small children. Any suggestions? | 
