Marbella City Council, sitting in full session, has granted final approval to the city’s new General Municipal Planning Plan (Plan General de Ordenación Municipal, PGOM), making Marbella the first municipality in Andalusia to adopt a general planning instrument adapted to the Andalusian Law for the Promotion of Territorial Sustainability (Ley de Impulso para la Sostenibilidad del Territorio de Andalucía, LISTA). This is a particularly significant urban planning milestone for a city that, over recent decades, has been marked by a complex situation of legal uncertainty arising from the evolution of its planning framework. That said, the adaptation to the planning system designed by the LISTA will not be fully completed until the Urban Planning Plan (Plan de Ordenación Urbana, POU) is approved.

It is especially telling that, although the LISTA was born with the stated aim of simplifying and speeding up the processing of planning instruments, the first PGOM approved in Andalusia under this new regime has taken close to six years to complete its approval procedure. The Marbella case shows that an effective reduction in processing times remains unfinished business for Andalusian urban planning, particularly because of the impact of the strategic environmental assessment, the need to obtain the numerous sectoral reports required by current legislation, and the necessary coordination between the various competent authorities. Since both the strategic environmental assessment and the sectoral reports required by law are indispensable, the desired reduction in timeframes will have to come from adequate staffing and management of the human resources devoted to this complex task.

The new plan comes after a prolonged period of legal uncertainty in Marbella’s urban planning. In October 2015, Marbella’s urban planning suffered a major setback when its general urban plan, approved only five years earlier (the 2010 PGOU), was declared null and void. That annulment brought the 1986 PGOU back into force as the applicable general planning instrument, preventing many of the projects envisaged in the 2010 plan from going ahead and acting as a brake on real estate investment.

Over the past decade, the city has had to operate under an urban planning framework designed for a reality very different from today’s. This has made it difficult to respond to needs linked to urban growth, the regeneration of the existing city, the provision of infrastructure and public facilities, and the proper integration of the urban transformations the municipality has undergone over recent decades.

One of the most notable features of the new PGOM is that, unlike the 2010 PGOU, it builds its model of the city on the existing urban reality rather than on the city envisaged in the 1986 PGOU. The Planning Report (Memoria de Ordenación) expressly acknowledges this, stating that “if the future Plan takes as its starting point the reality as drawn, the 1986 General Plan, rather than the city actually built, the result can never be correct”. The PGOM thus presents itself not as a revision of the previous plan, but as an instrument that starts from the existing city in order to organise and improve it.

From this perspective, the PGOM prioritises the regeneration, renewal and improvement of the consolidated city, completing the existing urban fabric and making use of vacant urban land, rather than promoting extensive territorial expansion.

The stated objectives of the new model include environmental sustainability, improved mobility, the promotion of affordable housing, economic diversification, the protection of the territory and the landscape, the strengthening of green infrastructure and the enhancement of urban quality.

With regard to the existing city, the PGOM sets out the guidelines to be followed when delimiting new urban transformation actions on urban land. Any such delimitation must start from the identification of a specific urban problem or deficit and respond to urban improvement objectives, such as replacing unsuitable building typologies, introducing new uses or intensities in areas with the capacity to absorb them, or renewing urban fabrics that are obsolete, poorly developed or insufficiently served by public facilities. In addition, the land concerned must form a homogeneous area capable of coherent execution, and its integration into the urban structure, as well as its economic and management viability, must be justified, taking into account, among other factors, the ownership structure, the costs and burdens of the action and any participation by the public administration.

As for new development actions on rural land, the PGOM, in line with the philosophy of the LISTA, chooses not to delimit them directly, but instead to establish the criteria that must justify their future incorporation into the urban development process. Such actions may be delimited where they are necessary to meet justified demands for growth, economic activity or improvement of the urban structure, with priority given to those that complete the existing urban grid and help resolve historical deficits in public facilities, services and infrastructure. Actions that are not contiguous with urban land will be exceptional and must be justified by the impossibility of an alternative location, the strategic nature of the proposed economic or tourism uses, or their supra-local scope. In all cases, their consistency with the PGOM model, their proper territorial and landscape integration, the availability of resources and infrastructure, and their social, environmental and economic viability must be demonstrated.

The PGOM also seeks to strengthen urban complexity by encouraging a diversity of uses and building typologies. The Planning Report expressly identifies as a strategic objective the creation of a more diverse city, favouring a mix of residential, tourism, commercial, productive and public-facility uses, as well as greater typological variety in buildings. The aim is to reduce the traditional functional specialisation of large parts of the municipality and to move towards more balanced and sustainable urban models capable of generating new centralities and economic opportunities.

However, the adaptation of Marbella’s general planning to the model designed by the LISTA will not be fully completed until the approval of the Urban Planning Plan (POU), which is currently being processed. Its initial approval is expected before the end of 2026, although its final approval is unlikely to take place before 2028.

It will be this instrument that establishes the detailed zoning of urban land, supplementing the general provisions contained in the PGOM. In the meantime, the 1986 PGOU and its implementing instruments will continue to play an essential role, as they will still govern the detailed zoning of urban land.

The approval of the new PGOM is a decisive step towards normalising Marbella’s urban planning framework and marks the beginning of a new chapter for the municipality’s real estate and urban development market. The interpretation and application of its provisions, together with the future approval of the POU, will shape Marbella’s urban planning agenda over the coming years and will create new opportunities that will call for particularly careful technical and legal analysis.

By Adrián Robles, senior Associate; and Pedro Fernández, co-founder and Managing Partner of KINSHIP.