Murcia, Spain: On 25th March 2011 Paramount Pictures made the official announcement that they have selected Murcia in Spain for the site of the largest theme park in Europe.

Interestingly this resulted in the highest number of weekend enquiries for Spanish property in five years.

Paramount are aiming to compete with Disneyland, Paris. Is this possible?

Murcian Councillor for Culture Pedro Alberto Cruz seems to think so, commenting; "the region of Murcia will become the "Leisure Centre of Spain", with a 2.5km² complex with 15,000 beds in hotels, creating 20,000 jobs and attracting 3 million tourists [per year] to Spain."

The president of the Paramount Murcia project was even more optimistic, saying that he expects Paramount to bring over 5,000,000 tourists to the Murcia region by the year 2020.

The theme park will be set on 158 hectares of land and will feature themed zones inspired by Paramount films such as Star Trek, Titanic and Mission Impossible.

There will also be a large 'Lifestyle Centre' with three, four and five star hotels, themed shopping malls, restaurants, bars and clubs. Alongside this will be a conference centre with the largest meeting room capacity in Murcia (over 3,000 seats) and an open-air auditorium which will hold 15,000 people.

As well as the theme park, Paramount will be centralising all their European film production at the site which will create thousands of new jobs in the Murcia region.

The Paramount Theme Park will be just 20 minutes from the new Murcia International Airport which is due to open later this year.

It's also only 20 minutes from the beaches of Mar Menor - a tourist hot spot where English Premiership football clubs regularly hold training camps.

The project is scheduled to be operational by 2015.

Despite the doom and gloom reported by the media, Spain continues to be one of the most popular places in Europe to buy property.

Spain is the third most visited country in the world and attracts more than 59 million tourists per year.

Rebecca Smith

Ocean Villas Group

Ocean Villas Group are specialists in lifestyle and investment property worldwide and are committed to supporting investors in both the emerging and established property markets across the globe.