Country Spain Municipality Seseña Time zone CET (UTC+1) Area 72.68 km² Local time Thursday 12:02 PM | Autonomous community Castile-La Mancha Demonym(s) Seseñero/a Elevation 598 m Population 21,121 (2014) Province Province of Toledo | |
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Weather 15°C, Wind NE at 10 km/h, 57% Humidity | ||
Seseña is a municipality located 35 km south of Madrid in the La Sagra comarca, province of Toledo, Castile-La Mancha, Spain. According to the 2009 census (INE), the municipality had a population of 16,231.
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Map of 45223 Sese%C3%B1a, Toledo, Spain
Although in a historically sparsely populated area, Seseña has gained some infamy as a result of controversial new speculative development projects in Vallegrande and El Quiñón during the Spanish property bubble. The municipality is nowadays composed of four sectors that are far away from each other and have no footpath connecting them, as is usual in Spanish towns.
History
The Battle of Seseña was an ill-fated Republican assault on the Nationalist stronghold of Seseña in October 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. The battle is notable for being the first time that tank warfare was seen in the Spanish war and for the use of Molotov cocktails against loyalist Soviet T-26 tanks by Francoist rebel troops.
Francisco Hernando
The Residencial Francisco Hernando development was built in the El Quiñón area of Seseña by property developer Onde 2000 during the construction boom of the 2000s (decade) due to the municipality's location within commuting distance of Madrid. It was to be one of the largest such developments in Spain, with an original plan of 13,500 units costing over 9 billion euros to build. However, the massive project raised eyebrows, since utilities such as water and gas lines were not included in the plans (ending up the completed units lacked these fundamentals which rendered them essentially uninhabitable), and also as the project had been approved unusually quickly. It turned out that the authorities had been bribed, and the former local Mayor José Luis Martín was soon arrested, but never brought to trial.
Following scandal and the economic crisis related to the Spanish property bubble, the developer ran into trouble sustaining demand and financing for the project. By mid-2008 fewer than 3000 of the completed apartments had been sold and fewer than a third of the sold apartments were occupied, leaving the development a "ghost town" reminder of Spain's economic woes.
The developer, Francisco Hernando, was never criminally charged with wrongdoing and has moved his business to Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish Colony in Central Africa.