The Marbella PGOU and the new PGOM: how 16,500 homes were legalised, annulled and rehoused under the LISTA (2026)

The Marbella PGOU of 2010 legalised roughly 16,500 homes built irregularly during the 1991 to 2006 GIL era, then the Supreme Court annulled it in October 2015, throwing those homes back into legal limbo. A decade later, the replacement PGOM, the first general plan in Andalusia adapted to the LISTA (Ley 7/2021), received the Junta de Andalucia’s favourable report in February 2026 and is completing its final approval phase. As of June 2026, the pending steps before the definitive pleno vote are the report from the Demarcacion de Costas and the ratification of the Dirección General de Urbanismo report, though Diario Sur’s June reporting indicated the Costas report was the last remaining step. For anyone buying Marbella property, the question is not whether the plan is interesting, but what legal regime governs the specific home you are about to pay for.

What is the Marbella PGOU and why does it matter to a buyer?

The Plan General de Ordenacion Urbana (PGOU) is the municipal master plan that classifies land, sets building rights and determines which constructions are lawful. Marbella’s still operative plan dates from 1986, making it nearly four decades old. The 2010 PGOU was meant to replace it and resolve the inheritance of the GIL era, when Jesús Gil and his successors ran the town hall from 1991 to 2006, reportedly leaving behind close to 30,000 irregular properties built without licences or on land destined for public facilities, according to El Mundo’s August 2024 reporting.

The 2010 plan, drafted by urbanist Manuel González Fustegueras with cross party support, legalised 16,500 of those homes through a system of compensations in cash or land. It left a further 1,500 homes outside the plan, as Diario de Sevilla reported. For a few years it looked as if Marbella had drawn a line under its urbanistic chaos.

For a buyer, the PGOU matters because it sets the ceiling on what you can build, extend or renovate on a given plot. A home legalised under the 2010 plan carried conditions, not a free pass. When that plan was annulled, those conditions and the legalisation itself evaporated.

How did the Supreme Court annul the PGOU 2010?

On 27 and 28 October 2015 the Tribunal Supremo, Spain’s highest administrative court, issued three sentencing orders, STS 4378/2015, STS 4379/2015 and STS 4380/2015, declaring the PGOU 2010 null de pleno derecho. El País reported the ruling on 4 November 2015, noting that the plan had legalised more than 16,500 irregularly built homes.

The court gave three grounds for the annulment. First, the town hall lacked the competence to legalise buildings already declared illegal by the courts; that power sits exclusively with judges, not planners. Second, the plan breached the European directive on strategic environmental assessment. Third, it lacked a report on economic sustainability. The court acknowledged the exceptional, generalised urbanistic illegality in Marbella and the 2006 central government dissolution of the town hall, but held that its role was to control legality, not to bless a retrospective amnesty.

The consequence was immediate: the 16,500 legalised homes returned to legal uncertainty. Marbella fell back on the 1986 PGOU and managed subsequent development through piecemeal normative patches, a condition the press described as prolonged juridical insecurity.

What is the PGOM and how does it replace the annulled PGOU?

The Plan General de Ordenacion Municipal (PGOM) is the new general plan, drafted under the Ley 7/2021 de Impulso para la Sostenibilidad del Territorio de Andalucia (LISTA). Marbella is the first municipality in Andalusia to adapt its planning to the LISTA, which replaced both the 1994 territorial planning law (LOTA) and the 2002 urbanistic law (LOUA). The LISTA introduces a two instrument structure: the PGOM sets the general municipal framework and the POU (Plan de Ordenacion Urbana) develops the detailed urban ordering.

The PGOM timeline is the substance of the 2026 status. The second public exhibition ran in June 2024, published in the BOJA on 18 June 2024. The Pleno approved the final proposal on 27 June 2025, resolving 106 public allegations and incorporating 12 million square metres of urban land, as Cadena SER reported. On 9 January 2026 the plan received its Declaracion Ambiental Estrategica from the Junta and the favourable report of the Dirección General de Carreteras, Europa Press reported. On 22 February 2026 the Consejería de Fomento issued its favourable report, the luz verde reported by Cadena SER, sending the document back to the town hall for definitive Pleno approval.

As of June 2026, the PGOM is in its final approval phase but is not yet in force. According to Europa Press’s January 2026 reporting, the town hall stated that two items remained pending: the report from the Demarcacion de Costas and the ratification of the Dirección General de Urbanismo report. By June 2026, Diario Sur reported that the town hall was still waiting specifically on the Costas report from the Ministerio para la Transicion Ecologica y el Reto Demografico. The still operative plan remains the 1986 PGOU. Any claim that the new plan is already law should be treated with caution; it is close, but the definitive municipal approval and publication in the BOJA are still pending. The Junta de Andalucia’s official notice confirms that the LISTA sets a maximum three year period between initial and final approval, a deadline Marbella will meet.

What does the PGOM mean for Marbella’s land and housing?

The PGOM covers roughly 117 million square metres of municipal territory. According to the town hall’s summary, it classifies about 53 million square metres as urban land (of which 3 million are empty urban plots ready for immediate development) and 64 million square metres as rustic land, with 30 million susceptible to transformation. Forty per cent of that transformable rustic land is reserved for protected housing (vivienda protegida).

Classification	Surface (m2)	Detail
Urban land	~53,000,000	3,000,000 are empty plots for immediate development
Rustic land	~64,000,000	30,000,000 susceptible to transformation
Protected housing share	40 per cent	Of transformable rustic land, reserved for vivienda protegida
Total municipal territory	~117,000,000	Full PGOM coverage

The PGOM opens a route to incorporate the fuera de ordenacion developments left over from the GIL era. The town hall’s explicit position, as the mayor stated in June 2025, is that those constructions are included as part of a normative development within the urbanistic ordering, not left as a separate problem. The practical effect, once the PGOM enters force, is that many homes stuck in AFO tolerance could move towards fuller legal recognition, provided they meet the conditions the new plan sets.

What is the 2026 modification of the 1986 PGOU Normas Urbanisticas?

While the PGOM waits for its final sign off, the town hall is not standing still. In June 2026 the government municipal opened a public consultation, running through 18 June, on a modification of up to 15 articles of the Normas Urbanisticas of the 1986 PGOU, the still operative plan. Diario Sur reported the move on 5 June 2026. The objective is to put urbanism at the service of economic activity, with changes across several areas.

Area of change	What the modification does	Why it matters to owners
Equipment (equipamientos)	Raises the compatible use cap from 20 per cent to 30 per cent of edificability	Public and private facilities gain more room for complementary commercial, restaurant or service uses
Industrial estates (poligonos)	Raises the height limit from 10 to 14 metres; allows compatible uses on rooftops up to 30 per cent of the floor below	Permits modern vertical logistics, storage and ancillary leisure or service activity
Hotels	Grants all existing hotels a 10 per cent edificability allowance regardless of their ordinance	Facilitates hotel modernisation and desestacionalisation
Large format retail	Creates a new commercial subzone CO.5 with up to four floors and 20 metre height; other subzones gain an additional floor	Recognises large format retail as a distinct category with its own rules
Building computation	Changes how basements and mezzanines count against edificability	Owners can expand usable surface without consuming buildable ceiling
Central rehabilitation	Eases rehabilitation rules in central Marbella and San Pedro Alcantara	Facilitates renovation while preserving landscape and heritage integration

For a buyer, this matters because it signals the town hall’s intent to loosen constraints on the existing 1986 framework even before the PGOM arrives. If you are buying a property in an industrial, commercial or hotel zone, the modification could change what can be built or renovated on the plot. The public consultation closed on 18 June 2026 and the modification will follow the standard approval route.

What is AFO and how does article 173 of the LISTA work?

AFO stands for asimilado a fuera de ordenacion, meaning assimilated to out of order. Article 173 of the LISTA (Ley 7/2021) defines it: it applies to completed irregular buildings, on any class of land and for any use, where enforcement of urban legality is no longer possible because the statutory restoration period has expired. The Sevilla urbanismo department’s guidance confirms this is the operative provision.

What AFO does: it allows connection to basic services (water, sanitation, electricity) where infrastructure exists, permits essential maintenance works for safety and habitability, and enables registration in the Property Registry.

What AFO does not do: it does not legalise the building. The property remains technically irregular. You cannot extend it, add a pool or carry out improvements beyond what is strictly necessary to maintain safety and habitability. If the town hall later revises its plan and reclassifies the land, the AFO status may be revisited.

For a deeper treatment of AFO as a buyer facing check, see our companion guide on illegal builds and land checks on the Costa del Sol. For the works you can and cannot do on an existing lawful property, see our guide to refurbishment permits in Spain.

What should a buyer check before purchasing a Marbella property?

The PGOU 2010 legalisation is no longer valid law, and the PGOM is not yet in force. That gap is the due diligence question. Your independent lawyer should run the following searches before you pay any deposit or sign an arras reservation contract:

Check	What it verifies	Why it matters now
Nota simple (Land Registry)	Ownership, charges, whether the property is registered at all	An unregistered or AFO only property is a red flag
Urbanistic classification at the town hall	Whether the land is urban or rustic under the 1986 PGOU	Determines what can be built, extended or renovated
AFO certification	Whether the property holds asimilado a fuera de ordenacion status	Confirms the tolerance regime; absent status means no documented right to utilities or registry
Licencia de primera ocupacion	Lawful completion of a new build	The key compliance document for post-1986 construction
PGOM status enquiry	Whether the plot is affected by the pending reclassification	Flags future changes to building rights once the PGOM enters force

The urbanistic classification check is the one most buyers never hear about. A villa on rustic land without AFO certification is the highest risk scenario in Marbella today. Your lawyer obtains this from the town hall’s urbanismo department, cross-referenced with Catastro data. For the cost framework around building or renovating once you have confirmed status, see our villa build and renovation cost guide.

How does Marbella’s situation compare with the rest of the Costa del Sol?

Marbella’s planning history is extreme, but the wider Costa del Sol shares the underlying legal framework. The LISTA applies across Andalusia, and the AFO regime under article 173 is available in every municipality. The difference is one of scale and backlog: few towns inherited 30,000 irregular properties or saw a Supreme Court annulment of their entire general plan.

Neighbouring Benahavís, for instance, has its own planning profile shaped by gated estates and hillside urbanisations, covered in our Benahavís area guide. The buyer’s discipline is the same: confirm the land classification, check for AFO if the build predates strict enforcement, and never accept an agent’s verbal assurance that an irregular build was sorted out years ago.

Once the PGOM enters force, the detailed urban ordering will follow through the Plan de Ordenacion Urbana (POU), the second instrument in the LISTA framework. The POU is expected to receive initial approval in 2026 and definitive approval between 2027 and 2028, meaning the full transition from the 1986 PGOU to a modern two plan system will take several more years to complete.

This guide is general information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change and individual circumstances differ. Verify current requirements with an independent lawyer (abogado) or tax advisor (gestor/asesor fiscal) before acting.