The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has confirmed the ruling that declared null the decree of the Yaiza City Council by which an advisory contract was awarded in 2015 to the company of Jorge Coderch, who drafted the General Plan of the municipality. Under that second contract, Coderch continued to provide services to the City Council after the entry into force of the Plan, related to the processes to try to legalize the hotel establishments declared illegal by the Justice, and it was precisely one of the people involved in those processes who filed a lawsuit against this hiring.
The plaintiffs include the company Estudio Lanzarote S.L. and its administrator, the architect Ángel Vicente García Puertas, who has been linked to Juan Francisco Rosa and Luis Lleó and who was even investigated together with them by the UCO during Operation Unión, in relation to the plot of Costa Roja. In addition, in the public exhibition phase of the General Plan, this architect filed allegations through his company, stating that he was the owner of a part of that plot of access to Playa Blanca, and also on behalf of the Papagayo Arena hotel. In addition, more recently he has worked for the businessman Juan Francisco Rosa, precisely in the process to try to legalize the Princesa Yaiza hotel. In fact, García Puertas is the one who has been providing the City Council with documentation on behalf of the hotel property, while at the same time litigating in the courts to try to remove Coderch from issuing reports.
The same thing had been previously attempted directly by Juan Francisco Rosa, who went to the City Council asking that Jorge Coderch be recused and that he not have "any intervention" in the procedures initiated to try to legalize his hotels in Playa Blanca, the Princesa Yaiza and the Son Bou, which in their current state remain illegalizable despite the increases in buildability allowed by the new Plan. In his writing, Rosa alleged that Coderch had a "direct or indirect interest" for having been the drafter of the General Plan. That recusal was rejected by the City Council, but what has prospered is the other route opened in the Courts by the architect hired by Rosa.
From alleged accusation to defender of Rosa's interests
In addition, the ruling shows one more link, in this case with the controversial Jiménez de Asúa Association of Jurists (AJJA). And it is that the lawyer acting on behalf of the plaintiff, José Antonio Zambrano Suárez, is in turn the lawyer and secretary of this association, which has supposedly tried to exercise the popular accusation in corruption cases opened in Lanzarote and especially in the Unión case, in which Juan Francisco Rosa is accused - and now awaiting judgment.
Currently, AJJA has already been expelled from almost all of these cases due to doubts about its true aims and intentions, which led the Prosecutor's Office to even compare it to a possible "Trojan horse with illegitimate interests". In fact, the first thing he did in some of the cases in which he managed to appear was to act against the investigating magistrates themselves and try to question the procedure, especially within the Unión case, and then he has continued to maintain similar theses to those of the defense and very far from the alleged accusation he intended to exercise.
In the case of one of the first lawyers who began to act on behalf of AJJA, Juan David García Pazos, it had already been found that he had previously worked as a lawyer for Luis Lleó. Now, it has also become clear that the lawyer who continues to act on behalf of the association, José Antonio Zambrano, has been defending Rosa's interests in this contentious lawsuit. And it is that regardless of whether the architect who filed the lawsuit did so or not following indications from the businessman who hired him to legalize his hotels, what is evident is that the objective he has achieved is the one that Juan Francisco Rosa had been pursuing for more than three years, when he unsuccessfully tried to recuse Coderch.
The City Council questioned the "legitimacy" of the plaintiff
In his lawsuit, the architect and his company asked that the decree awarding that advisory contract be annulled, alleging that the Public Sector Contracts Law was breached, since the amount was 32,100 euros and even so the City Council did not allow other companies to apply and made a direct award. For its part, the City Council asked that the lawsuit not be admitted, alleging that there was a "lack of legitimacy" on the part of García Puertas, because it was "impossible" for him to have been awarded.
In this regard, he pointed out that he would have incurred clear "incompatibilities" in advising the City Council, when he was providing "advice simultaneously to owners of buildings declared illegal in judicial proceedings, whose legalization is requested before the Municipal Corporation". Regarding the substance of the lawsuit, the City Council argued that it opted for a direct award because Jorge Coderch, as drafter of the Plan, was "in a privileged position to give the best technical and legal diagnosis of each of the licenses subject to the various disputes".
However, as the Contentious-Administrative Court had already done, the TSJC dismisses these arguments. Regarding the lack of legitimacy of the plaintiff, it points out that he could have concurred as a bidder, although later "his expulsion from the contracting procedure was determined by the circumstances adduced by the City Council". Regarding the convenience of the advice being provided by the drafter of the General Plan, he concludes that "there is no evidence that by the fact of being the drafter of a PGO, which is a very specific type of activity, one has per se a capacity for technical and legal diagnosis (activity of a different sign to the previous one) of such a magnitude that it makes it irrelevant to consult with other professionals in the sector".
Thus, it confirms the judgment of first instance and annuls the decree signed four years ago by the former mayor of Yaiza, Gladys Acuña, imposing on the City Council the payment of the costs generated with this appeal. However, this ruling can still be appealed before the Supreme Court.