ARCHIVED - Land clearance work on Paramount Park site

Trees have been felled and scrub cleared

Expat rumour machines went into overdrive this week when news filtered out that “something was happening at the Paramount park site“ just outside Alhama de Murcia.

An excited reader contacted the office demanding to know why no report had been produced that work had started on the construction of the theme park, to which the answer was that construction couldn´t possibly have begun as the council in Alhama de Murcia still have to grant full planning approval on the location and construction can´t begin until that particular final hurdle has been overcome.

The council announced just a few days ago that they were still processing paperwork and the Mayor denied rumours which originated from the local opposition party that there were any problems with the park, assuring residents that construction would begin by the end of the year.

On the 17th September, Pedro Cruz, the regional minister for culture and tourism, said that clearance work on the plots “would begin within a few days” and he also confirmed that construction work would only begin when the council had processed all of the required paperwork.
The work undertaken has been carried out on a small area of the total plot, and the next day the regional Spanish paper, La Verdad carried a photograph of a pile of tree stumps and scrub piled up against a bare landscape.

The paper informed readers that Proyectos Emblemáticos de la Región de Murcia (Premursa) had started ground clearance and had begun to pull out the citrus trees on the plot. They had checked with the council they said, and reported that it was not necessary for the company to obtain any type of permission for this activity, which represented little more than ploughing a plot of land.

The report indicated that the urban planning offices within Alhama council were still waiting for the official registration of documentation which was an essential element of the process to grant the licences and that planning could only be given when this occurred.

In order to ensure that the correct information was reported the site was checked on Thursday 3rd October. Some trees have indeed been felled and others pruned ready for replanting, but this work has been carried out in a relatively small area close to where the first stone was laid at the end of May last year and is only superficial land clearance.

There was no machinery on site or any indication that further work was being undertaken, but in truth there is little point clearing scrubland superficially until earthworks can start, which requires permission from the council, as bulldozers will go straight through this landscape like a knife through soft butter once work begins in earnest, and bits of twiggy scrub will be crushed and become invisible within seconds.
So for the moment, some land clearance has indeed begun on the site for the Paramount Theme Park in Alhama de Murcia, but construction cannot begin until the full licences have been granted by Alhama de Murcia council.

Full Paramount Park history and archive articles in the dedicated Alhama de Murcia town section under the subject heading of Paramount Park Alhama.