Banana Beach, would not be retrospectively licensed and would have to be demolished, probably next year.

Banana Beach is one of three holiday home schemes excluded from an initiative to stop a decade-long dispute over the legality of many developments in Marbella. This spring the town's new mayor, Angeles Muñoz - who has vowed to end years of actual or alleged corruption involving former Marbella council chiefs and developers – announced that 18,000 "illegal" homes in the area would be given retrospective building licences, making them legal. But she said three schemes, including Banana Beach, would not be retrospectively licensed and would have to be demolished, probably next year.Yet spanishpropertyworld.com, the website quoted above, still advertises flats at Banana Beach from €259,888 (£243,300). The website – which does not publish its telephone number – makes no reference to the demolition threat and has not answered Cash's repeated emails on the subject.A property portal, esmoz.com, is advertising all sizes of apartments at Banana Beach for sale, but has also failed to answer enquiries about the scheme. It describes Banana Beach as "a beautiful, luxury development of apartments right on the beach-front in Marbella. There are extensive leisure facilities and, of course, spectacular sea views".The agency Interealty, which is selling Banana Beach flats through esmoz.com, has also declined to respond to telephone and email enquiries about the ads.A spokesman for the Marbella authorities says the mayor wanted to license retrospectively all illegal homes but this has been prevented by regional and national governments. One reason may be that, unlike most other schemes, Banana Beach, built in 1998, is only 100 metres from the sea and breaks an earlier development law that prevents homes being constructed so close to the coast.Hundreds of existing owners at Banana Beach, many of them Britons, face their homes being demolished, with no compensation offered