La Zagaleta is home, or at least part-time hideaway, to about 200 business families, celebrities and assorted millionaires

La Zagaleta is home, or at least part-time hideaway, to about 200 business families, celebrities and assorted millionaires. Remaining plot prices start at about €2.2m, or €440 a square metre, while the most expensive of the estate’s palatial homes can still fetch in excess of €10m.

Despite its geography La Zagaleta is light years from the thousands of empty, identikit villas hanging grimly from the arid slopes or lined up in the soulless inland estates of the Costa del Sol and other Mediterranean strips. The second – or holiday – home segment is where Spain’s catastrophic property collapse started in 2007, eventually bringing the entire economy down with it. As the country struggles to shake off low or negative economic growth, more than 1m new or unfinished homes remain unsold around the country.

Discounts of up to 30 or 40 per cent abound as cash-starved developers, bankruptcy administrators or creditors look for quick sales to avoid punitive balance sheet write-downs. Sector experts say it could be another three to five years before the situation begins to look manageable.

The view from the country’s high-end housing segment is markedly less Dante-esque. With few serious oversupply issues, less onerous debt leveraging by developers and a ready – if reduced or war-weary – selection of potential buyers just a phone call away, the luxury end has been equipped to weather the crisis better than most. Coaxing buyers back into the market, however, has not been easy, says Borja Godoy, head of marketing at the Sotogrande estate, about an hour south-west of La Zagaleta.