A British couple have been sentenced to eight months in prison and ordered to demolish their Spanish villa for breaching planning regulations.
David and Janet Hartshorn illegally built a large house on protected land near the Costa del Sol town of Torrox, a judge ruled.
The couple appeared before a judge at Criminal Court number eight in Malaga last October 14 for a one-day hearing, with the court's sentencing published yesterday.
The judge is expected to suspend the prison sentence, as jail terms of two years and under are usually suspended for first time offenders in Spain.
Speaking at the property under threat of demolition, Mrs Hartshorn said she had not yet been informed of the judge's ruling.
'This is terrible news,' she said. 'I am very upset by this. We haven't been told anything about the result of the court case. We have a meeting with our solicitor tomorrow..
'The house was built nine years ago and people are still building houses illegally round here.
Judges in Spain make their sentences known in written rulings rather than at hearings in open court.
Those rulings are then made known to the parties involved through their solicitors.
Defendants do not attend a sentencing hearing as they do in UK courts and the ruling was published in reliable local newspaper Malaga Hoy yesterday.
The judge ordered them to demolish the house and pay a fine of €5,400 (£4,500).
The couple built the 2,580sq ft house on land which only had permission for a house one tenth that size.
In September 2000 they bought a third of an acre of land in Pago de Santilla, near Torrox, on which there was already a tiny ruin of a house of 320 square feet.
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