Spanish views from a small town

In Spain, to construct a house, you have to buy the necessary land, pay for the appropriate municipal and regional licenses and present blueprints to all and sundry for approbation. It takes time and money and patience. Sometimes, even after going through all the trouble and expense, some homeowners have to end up in the street because their homes are declared illegal for minimal reasons. The law is the law, and their house comes down. Of course, if you're trying to build a mega-hotel on the beach, it's different. Mayors will go out of their way to help you get all the necessary permits and licenses. Banks will loan you money with practically no interest to buy the necessary land and build as big as you want. You will have no problem whatsoever in this democratic country where private enterprise is encouraged. However, if you try to build your mega-hotel on protected land, be careful. Though there might be powerful people helping you, if the environmental protection groups ...

Yesterday afternoon a 63 year-old woman named Josefa had to leave the island of Fuerteventura in the Canaries to go to prison on the island of Lanzarote. She couldn't because, after three days of being on a hunger strike protesting her prison sentence, she fell down in a dead faint before being led onto the ferry and was sent to the hospital. So what? Well, she was being sent to prison for six months because she hadn't demolished the house where she and her two children and three grandchildren live.  Yes, only in Spain. Her story began almost twenty years ago when she found herself divorced with two children and nowhere to go. So she built a small shack on a piece of property she had inherited from her parents. Over time her daughter added three children to the family. They lived off sporadic jobs they could find, and at the moment the grandmother, Josefa, is receiving an unemployment check of 320 euros a month until September, and her daughter 400. Her son isn't receivin...