Perils of buying in Spain

Hi all
 
My solicitor issued a legal demand (burofax) for my bank guarantee on 14th May, SJ had 15 days to respond but they haven’t even acknowledged receipt. They have now broken the law and will be liable to a fine if I instruct my solicitor to report them to the authorities. My solicitor has advised me that in the absence of the guarantee, which is required by law, I am entitled to get my money back, but to get this she will need to issue court proceedings at a cost of around € 13,000. This is not really what I want, I just want the bank guarantee which I have been waiting five months for.  
 
I think that SJ are behaving in a very underhand and arrogant way. What gives them the right to ignore the law and put people under stress? If they can disregard their obligations so easily over this issue, what hope do we have of seeing the site developed as planned.
 
My property is due for completion December 07 which I believe we all know will not be until May 08 at the earliest. In my contract it says that I am entitled to cancel and receive a refund should the completion date be extended by over three months, hopefully this will give me some security if the whole thing goes pear shaped.
 
I have now put the ball back in my solicitor’s court as apparently she has a large number of clients purchasing at SADM and knew when she forwarded my deposit to SJ, last December, that there was a problem with the guarantees. I have told her that she did not act in my best interests and should have ensured that the guarantee was exchanged for my deposit simultaneously. Watch this space!!!
 
I wondered if anyone else is using my solicitor although I don’t think that I am allowed to name her on this forum. However, her office was in Santiago de la Ribera until she moved to San Javier last week.
 
I would hope that if enough of us could bombard SJ with requests for the guarantee, along with a joint threat to take them to court and/or have fines imposed they may be forced to listen. If anyone is interested in joining me putting the pressure on - please send a PM or email. 
 

Mattjo,

Reading your mail below we are in the very same position and I guess we are using the same solicitor.

Our solicitor has also recently sent a burofax as you have outlined below and it has not resulted in SJ delivering the bank guarantee......so where to now ?

Have you asked about a joint law suit where we could split the 13,000euro between a number of unhappy clients

Also a recent posting mentions the following.......quote from SJ

"The delay expected is around 1 year (January 2009), so if you have the Bank Guarantee and the property is not delivered by April 2008, you can execute your bank Guarantee and recover your money back plus legal interest, always if the cause of the delay relies on the builder, so if the delay is caused by council of Jumilla being slow with the building license or Murcia Government with related permissions, then the builder cannot be blamed and will not refund any monies"

guess this changes things.....