Footpath reopened after fight from plucky pensioner and an Olive Press campaign
AN Olive Press campaign to save public rights of way around Andalucia has had its first success.
A footpath that pensioner Jose Garcia Moreno had walked from his house near Arriate, Malaga, for over 50 years was blocked by developers.
Now, after a ruling from Arriate town hall the landowner has been forced to take down a locked gate blocking the right of way.
“It is excellent news,” Jose Moreno, 69, told the Olive Press. “Thanks to your story and campaign at least one less footpath is blocked in Andalucia.”
Angry
We had told last year how Moreno – who has one arm and is paralysed down one side – had been unable to take the daily walk he had taken for the last 50 years.
Despite his disability (he lost his arm in a tractor accident and has had two strokes), he walks for up to seven hours a day on the advice of his doctor.
So angry was he that his neighbour had put up a two metre high gate blocking the four-metre wide ‘vereda’, that he instructed lawyers to fight his case.
He also asked the Olive Press to step in to help and after lobbying the town hall for a number of months, the environment department ordered the owner to take down the gate.
Mayor Bernardino Gaiona, of the IU party, confirmed the path was now open again.
“We have ascertained that it exists and is on the catastral,” he said.
“This is a victory for public rights of way,” added Moreno. “I hope through the help of papers like the Olive Press we can open many of the hundreds of blocked paths around Andalucia.”
The Olive Press revealed in July last year that over 30 public footpaths are currently blocked around the town of Ronda alone.
A walking group Pasos Largos has issued 30 denuncias (reports) against illegal blockages in the last three years alone.
Anybody having problems with rightsd of way can always look at the old military maps, now available on CD for 10 € from the Centro Geografico nacional. These maps show all the known paths quite accurately. An even better source is the Catastro de Mendizabal, this 1830s set of books is a doomsday book compiled by the Post Napoleonic War Government. It lists and describes all the footpaths, droving paths and even caminos vecinales, or traditional rights of way. For the Sierra Nevada and alpujarra region there is a set of maps from the Centro Geografico Nacional with an overprinting of all the walkable foot paths.