Comfortable black vans with tinted windows ply the Mykonian landscape, carrying all types of transport. Endless traffic jams in the season that starts shortly before Easter. Private parties in dozens of luxury villas and large entertainment centers, i.e. highly profitable economic activity, require a large abundance of resources: including land.

“Every winter Mykonos is a construction site” tells “K” an island government official who wished to remain anonymous following a recent attack on an archaeologist. Manoli Psaros, employee of the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades. A flurry of construction work is often accompanied by urban arbitrariness. According to Giorgos Lialiou’s report in K, fines are imposed, but even if they are paid by offenders, they do not appear to be a financial hurdle.

cases beatings and attacks people who expressed their reactions to the problematic construction works in the Cyclades that have seen the light of day in recent years. Among them are real estate agent Florios Asimomitis, businessman Theodoros Kusatanas and deputy mayor of the island Miltiadis Atsamoglu.

“Although their practice is the same as that of the mafia, this is not the system that sells protection in the stores of Athens“, – says a resident of Mykonos with knowledge of the matter. “There is no mafia, for the creation of which you need to pay money. Instead, it’s very few people, maybe less than 10 not from Mykonos and they are not even the Cyclades. They are just businessmen, Greeks or foreigners.”

Residents say “K” about “Dubai Project”which are incompatible with the landscape and its legally protected elements and therefore face negative decisions. According to them, the pressure faced by government officials responsible for licensing is happening every day: “The system also works through political pressure to speed things up or be more tolerant,” K said.

Remote owners and circumvention of authorities

“70% – 75% of the land is in the wrong hands” – says the old-timer of the island on “K”. “A large percentage (of them) is owned by funds and many properties of foreign companies, which avoids the domestic tax regime.”

The complexity of the ownership structure of the island’s enterprises becomes apparent during building permit application: “We have cases when a company requests a permit for repair and construction work on a specific building, and another company requests an operating permit for the same building,” comments an employee of the licensing agency.

“They bypass the archaeological service, which by law is the first authorized body. That’s where the offense begins.”

As everyone rushes to build in Mykonos, engineers who undertake the formalization of licensing procedures, often use the opportunity given to them by law to avoid bureaucracy and obtain permits for minor works on their own, bypassing – legally – the competent authorities.

“If the reason is related to the archaeological service, as a rule, the engineer should note it. Though they don’t mark it (on license) take responsibility for arbitrariness them and, thus, bypassing the archaeological service, which by law is the first authorized body. This is where the offense begins, ”said people familiar with the matter.

Archaeologists who predicted the future

The settlements of the Cyclades have a long history, despite the changes of each era. Their cores, built before 1830, have been repeatedly protected by the provisions of the archaeological law. However, precisely because they are residential settlements, it is very difficult to defend them, as their inhabitants invade buildings or change their use over the years.

“Because the use of the land is not institutionalized, which is allowed, over time, an active settlement that is a residence turns into two things: either tourist housing, which, at least for the building, and not for the settlement as a whole, is a healthy operation, or at the health store. The latter is also the most problematic treatment, because it entails interventions that are not easy to “marry,” the archaeologist explains to K.

In 1963, Mykonos was declared in need of special protection.

Today Ephorate of antiquities of the Cyclades based in Athens, but the first, the historical place of service was in Mykonos. “Because of Delos.” Archaeologists who worked in the service in the 1950s and 1960s, although they specialized in classical antiquities, distinguished Mykonos from other Cycladic islands as a special architectural value..

“They saw in the settlement of Mykonos a pearl, an island country built on the sea, and they also saw what was coming,” the archaeologist explains. “There was the vigilance of archaeologists so that it could be saved. This is the order we still serve,” he adds. Thus, anticipating the subsequent development of tourism, they ensured the protection of the settlement, and in 1963 Mykonos was recognized as in need of special protection. Ten years later, it was declared an archaeological site.

However, a valuable archaeological site, located in the midst of construction work, in the middle of the archipelago.