Main road leading into Benidorm with illegal billboards

Benidorm City Council has decided that it will clamp down on illegal advertising boards that have sprouted up across the city illegally - on both public and private land.
The main access roads into Benidorm are littered with billboards displaying a variety of company brands and products - but many of these have been put up without permission. You can identify the illegal ones as they have metal poles for the supports - often rusty.
The legal ones, which are managed by the company "Impursa" have a single white support with an Impursa sign on it and a "Benidorm" logo at the top.

Illegal billboards appear on waste ground anywhere

According to figures provided by the PP, council spokesman Jose Ramon de Zarate estimates that there are currently more than 5,000 billboards, banners and posters scattered across the City illegally and without a license and therefore do not pay any fees to the City.... oh and how the councils just love their licenses to do anything here in Spain.

Literally for any building works you want doing to your house here in Spain you have to apply for a licence - and licence equals money. Lo and behold anyone that does any sort of renovation without one - in both La Nucia and Alfaz the man from the Town Hall planning department drives around the urbanisations looking for any evidence of works going on such as a builders van parked outside someones house. They are even known to pop into the local builders merchant and see who is having materials delivered and cross check that they have applied for a licence! If you are caught without one then you are ordered to STOP - the local police are even called and the area is taped off. You will then be fined and forced to apply for a licence before work can commence. This is why you see so many builders working over the weekend when the Town Halls are closed ... they obviously have no licences!

One of the legal billboards on the N332

"Impursa" - the company that manages the billboards and street furniture throughout the city pays an annual  fee of 150,000 euros for those that have been legally erected with permission. Gonzalez de Zarate estimates that the council could be losing out on approximately a further 400,000 euros for the illegally placed one - a huge amount of income for the Town Hall. They are now urgently drafting up a bill to eradicate the proliferation of  illegally placed advertising on both public and private spaces, which they say will also improve the image of the Town. 

In the light of all the controversy over advertising, the PP has asked the Town Hall to reconsider its proposal to request a change in the Coastal Act to allow advertising to be placed on the beaches. They fear that it may become a sea of illegal billboards as is evident across the town.