The Platform of Those Affected by the Tourism Law has reported that the Court of Contentious Administrative Matters Number 6 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has annulled a fine of 2,250 euros imposed by the Regional Vice-Ministry of Tourism in 2023 on the owner of an apartment for not dedicating it to this activity.
In its legal grounds, the head of the aforementioned court explains in her ruling, against which no appeal is possible, that "what motivates the initiation of the sanctioning procedure is not the breach of the principle of unity of exploitation, but the breach of the duty to adhere to the tourist use", as established in article 23 of the Canary Islands Housing Law.
That is, "for considering that a residential use has been given to a lodging unit whose destination, according to current planning, is tourist use", which this two-key apartment located in Playa del Inglés, in the south of Gran Canaria, ceased to have since 2016.
The ruling, provided to EFE by this Platform, emphasizes that "the absence of tourist exploitation in no case can be identified as a breach of the duty to adhere to the use established by the planning, among other reasons, because this hypothesis is expressly admitted in art. 42.1 of the Organic Law of the Constitutional Court, without associating it with any infraction or sanction, and because the exercise of tourist activity is free, according to art. 13.1" of the same norm.
It also specifies that the current General Plan of Ordination of San Bartolomé de Tirajana "does not expressly prohibit residential use other than tourist use in the plot in question", included in the coastal tourist area of the municipality, where this complementarity is allowed "to the typologies of apartments, vacation homes and bungalows" that are located in it.
Tourism believes that Justice reaffirms the need to specialize land uses
The Regional Deputy Minister of Tourism, José Manuel Sanabria, has said that the ruling "reaffirms the need" for municipal plans to specialize land uses.
Sanabria recalls in a statement that the Ministry of Tourism and Employment of the Canary Islands Government suspended sanctioning procedures in 2024 pending a judge's ruling, while stressing that "collaboration between administrations is essential to specialize planning because, in this way, legal certainty will be granted to owners and the sector itself".
In his opinion, this court ruling "will affect the rest of the procedures, more than thirty, initiated in this same complex" of apartments, located in Playa del Inglés, in the Gran Canarian municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana.
"The same criteria will only be applied in procedures in which there is identity of object and similarity of all circumstances, case by case," he said next.
The Deputy Minister recalled that the Regional Ministry of Tourism and Employment "has already initiated the regulatory reform processes linked, precisely, to this situation that has been occurring in the Canary Islands for decades and in which the registry reality does not coincide with that of land use and planning."
The Government Council of the Canary Islands approved on March 17 the decree by which sanctions are suspended for people registered in tourist apartments.
The Regional Minister of Tourism and Employment, Jéssica de León, explained then that this suspension concerns all phases of the sanctioning procedure: those who have had a file initiated, those that are in process and those that are in cause of resolution.
Regarding those who have been sanctioned and paid the imposed fines, she admitted that the Government of the Canary Islands has "little room" to leave them without effect, although she assured that a new sanction will be avoided if those affected continue to reside in those tourist apartments.
