MARBELLA CLUB

Briton, who has not been named, was rounded up by the Civil Guard with seven Spaniards, two Moroccans, a Belgian, a Colombian and an Argentinian after a tip-off.police on the Costa del Sol smashed a gang of alleged armed robbers who terrorised wealthy home owners.
The force, which seized 10 guns and ammo, said the arrests had prevented the planned murder of a member of a rival gang.Civil Guard chief Jose Espinosa said victims were tied-up and threatened at gunpoint until they disclosed pin numbers or safe combinations.
Thieves switched a Portsmouth couple's £27k caravan with a mosscovered wreck at a site near Lloret de Mar, Spain.

An overabundance of homes in Spain’s beachside playground sends real estate agencies into crisis mode. Faced with rapidly deteriorating demand after decades of growth and construction, one of Europe’s most popular vacation and retirement destinations is showing signs of desperation, now offering buyers a deal usually reserved for corner stores.Left with a surplus of properties after a decade of rapid building to keep pace with the demand of vacationers and second-home buyers from Northern Europe, especially Britain, one developer is offering a buy one, get one free deal on homes along the legendary stretch of coast.Once home to movie stars and European aristocracy, the Costa del Sol, stretching from the regional capital of Malaga to the southernmost point of the country in Tarifa, has lately fallen on hard times thanks to overdevelopment, a faltering global economy and systematic corruption that has left entire towns bankrupt.The region, so dependent on the housing market, was left floundering, driving hundreds of developers and real estate agencies out of business, and forcing the few that remain to extreme measures. Salsa Immobiliaria, located in Malaga, has launched a special, offering a free golf resort apartment when purchasing a $1.1 million seaside home. While offering a free apartment may appear like a dramatic measure, Salsa said it would be preferential to lowering prices any more than they already have. “The price of new housing will not be reduced further because it already has been on several occasions,” Guillermo Chicote told the Spanish newspaper El Pais. “People shouldn’t expect home prices to go down 30 or 40 percent, because I’d as soon give the houses away to the bank before doing that.”
Despite drastic efforts to unload properties across the region, Spain’s coastal real estate problems do not appear to extend to the country’s high-end homes.
“At the top end, prices perhaps doubled in the period up to 2004 or 2005, although since then there’s been no real change. At the bottom end things are quite different: a big over-supply, very few buyers now, prices are falling,” James Stewart of Savills Real Estate told the Financial Times.Outside of high-end pockets along the coast, tourist-heavy towns have suffered due to a glut of construction and a scheme known as “off-plan,” where a buyer pledges to purchase a home before it has been built, making long-term financial stability all the more important.
The downturn on the Costa del Sol is a part of a large, continent-wide challenge, most visible in Ireland and Spain, where inflated home prices and decreasing demand for new construction have left economies reeling.

Four Britons were being held on the Costa del Sol today accused of the shooting of a Liverpool man last month.Beachfront bar security boss Marvin Herbert was gunned down on September 24 at Puerto Banus, the millionaires’ yacht marina on the edge of Marbella.The 33-year-old was shot five times in the eye, the groin, pelvis, right leg and right arm.He was attacked in broad daylight by a lone gunman in front of dozens of witnesses.Herbert remains in hospital after a series of operations.
Police immediately said they believed the attack was a “settling of scores” related to drug trafficking.Puerto Banus and nearby Nueva Andalucia is a favourite hang-out for British and other international “costa crooks”.Herbert is said to have spent several hours drinking coffee alone on the terrace of Solly’s Diner in Puerto Banus before the shooting.At the time sources suggested the attack could have been revenge for the shooting of another Liverpool man in Marbella.Several other tit-for-tat shootings have taken place in the resorts in recent months.Numerous city gangsters are said to be in Spain, including some with links to murders such as that of Colin Smith, Curtis Warren’s former right-hand man shot dead in Speke last November