Land surveyor in Murcia

The Murcia huerta: tahúllas, irrigation channels and inheritances

Around the city, the huerta (the irrigated market-garden land) is divided into small plots measured in tahúllas, the local land measure of about 1,118 m², watered by main irrigation channels and side channels (brazales) that often serve as the boundary. Old deeds speak of properties “of so many tahúllas” with boundaries named after people, and successive inheritances have split them into narrow plots where every metre counts.

We measure with GNSS, locate irrigation channels, tracks and buildings, and compare everything with the title deed and with the Cadastre (Catastro, Spain's land and property register for tax purposes). To subdivide, merge or register the real area, we prepare the GML file (the georeferenced parcel format the Cadastre and the Land Registry require) and, if it does not match the Cadastre, the alternative graphic validation report (IVGA).

The huerta is also under heavy pressure from the city. Between the pedanías (the outlying villages of the municipality), the lanes and the houses that went up beside the irrigation channels, many plots are now rural in little more than name, and before subdividing or building we check what the planning rules allow on that particular plot.

The coast: Mar Menor, La Manga, Mazarrón and Águilas

The Murcia coast shares problems with the rest of the Mediterranean, such as 1970s and 1980s urbanisations whose plots do not match the Cadastre, but it has two features of its own. Around the Mar Menor there are old frontline houses with the Costas demarcation line (deslinde de Costas) running over them, and the law protecting the lagoon limits what can be done around it. In Mazarrón and Águilas, among ramblas (dry riverbeds) and low hills, the slope and the watercourses shape the design of a house as much as the planning rules do.

If your house or plot is in Cartagena, on the shore of the Mar Menor, in La Manga or in Cabo de Palos, the enquiry is usually about a sale or a residential project: measuring what is built, locating the Costas demarcation line and checking what the lagoon protection law allows.

In Águilas, the coves and the plots overlooking the sea combine the Costas line with terrain that calls for walls and platforms, and the survey has to capture both.

Ramblas and the Segura river basin authority

Murcia is a land of ramblas: watercourses that are dry for most of the year and fill suddenly in a storm. A plot bordering a rambla is subject to an easement and a control zone (zona de policía), and the authority responsible is the river basin authority, the Confederación Hidrográfica del Segura.

We locate the plot in relation to the watercourse and provide levels, so that the purchase or the project is decided on data rather than on the hope that it will not rain hard.

Inland: the Altiplano, the Northwest and the Guadalentín

In Jumilla, Yecla, Caravaca, Moratalla or Lorca the estates are large: vineyards, almonds, olives, cereals and, increasingly, irrigated farmland and solar plants. We measure these estates with GNSS and drone, with an orthophoto and a terrain model of the whole area, and we prepare the plot subdivisions and mergers that go with a sale or an inheritance.

In the Altiplano there are still properties described in fanegas (an old measure of land), and the difference between what is written and what is measured can run to hectares.

Topographic survey in Murcia for architects and builders

In the city and the pedanías we work for architecture practices and builders: surveys of building plots and buildings, structural setting out, geometric control during construction and volume calculations. We deliver a georeferenced DWG in ETRS89, with the street levels and the party walls, so that the project starts on a base that does not need correcting.

Typical cases in Murcia

Heirs dividing an 8-tahúlla huerta property in one of the pedanías of Murcia. A buyer who wants to know whether a house beside the Mar Menor is affected by the Costas demarcation line. An almond farm in the Northwest that needs the orthophoto and the plan of all its plots. A practice designing a house in Mazarrón next to a rambla.