The Provincial Court of Las Palmas has rejected Dimas Martín's appeal and has confirmed another conviction in the Unión case, for which he must serve two more years in prison, as well as pay a fine of 12,000 euros for a crime against land management. In addition, he will have to demolish the works he carried out illegally in a family home located in Los Rostros, on protected land in the municipality of Yaiza and within the Los Volcanes Natural Park.
The new ruling again rejects all the alleged grounds for annulment invoked by the defense, validating once again the instruction of this case. In addition, it recalls the rulings of the Supreme Court that have already rejected the same arguments in other parts of the Unión case that already have a final judgment. Thus, it rules out that fundamental rights have been violated and also that there was "manipulation" in the recordings of telephone conversations due to the alleged "break in the chain of custody of the CDs".
"What the party is talking about is nothing more than the physical media on which the conversations are recorded, which are duly recorded in the SITEL system," the ruling of Section Two of the Court emphasizes, adding that "if there are really doubts regarding the manipulation of the conversations, the proper thing to do would have been to request a contrast between the content of the CD and the matrix of the central server".
A "mere extension" that included three bedrooms, a pool and walls
Regarding the substance of the facts that were judged in this case, the Court points out that with his appeal, the defense intended to argue that "the works consisted of a mere extension of the existing house without criminal relevance", but responds that this is a "particular and partial assessment of the evidence or, rather, his particular and partial version of what happened".
In this regard, it emphasizes that what according to Dimas' defense was a "mere extension" was actually "the addition of three rooms to the house, raising the ceilings, so that the building increases both in the number of rooms and in height, a pool of about thirty square meters is added (the fact that it is subsequently covered does not mean that it has not been done or that it does not exist) and part of the property is also being walled, as reflected in the complaint of the Seprona of March 20, 2009, and a paved access terrace of about 25 square meters is made".
In addition, it recalls that all the reports agreed in pointing out that the works were carried out on protected rural land and, specifically, within the Los Volcanes Natural Park. "We are not dealing with just any protected land, we are not dealing with just any rural land, we are dealing with works that are carried out within a Natural Park, with all that this entails," the ruling insists.
"He cannot present himself as a total layman in the matter"
In its ruling, the Court also emphasizes that Dimas Martín "cannot now present himself as a total layman in the matter", since "he has held very relevant public positions on the island of Lanzarote and, without a doubt, he knows perfectly well that the area in question was a natural park". Therefore, it considers that "there can be no doubt that he knew that to build in that place, to execute the works he was carrying out, he needed to obtain the corresponding building permit, a permit that he neither had nor requested, aware, as he was, that it could never be granted to him".
Regarding the "doubts" that his defense tried to sow about the classification of the land where the works were carried out, the ruling responds that they are "really non-existent". Among other things, Dimas' lawyer, Manuel González Peeters, tried to argue that the construction could be legalized if it were of "public interest", appealing to an article of the law that contemplates this possibility. "It turns out that there is neither public interest for the accused's house to have a pool, nor is there such interest in closing his property, nor is there public interest in expanding his property with three more rooms," the Court's ruling responds.
"All this", he adds, "regardless of the fact that it also does not seem that we are facing the need to establish industrial, energy or tourist activities right there, so he cannot rely on said legal precept to generate really non-existent doubts about the illegality of the action executed by the appellant today, much less to make people think that, in some way, said works could be legalized, something that he also does not prove that he has claimed", he concludes.
"Covering a pool is not equivalent to restoring the land to its previous state"
Finally, Dimas' defense requested that, if the conviction was not annulled, mitigating factors be applied to reduce the sentence. On the one hand, he argued that there had been undue delays in the investigation, but this is rejected by the ruling, which considers that the complexity of the case, which arises as a separate piece of the Unión case, justifies the time it took to reach trial.
On the other hand, the defense alleged that there was a "repair of the damage", by having "covered" the pool that he built in front of the house. "Covering a pool is not equivalent to restoring the land to its previous state. Moreover, covering it does not prevent, with a simple action, it from being put back into use nor does it prove, as it is intended to show, that the work has no vocation for permanence," the ruling responds.
Finally, it also rejects another thesis sustained by the defense, which requested that the demolition order included in the ruling be annulled, alleging that the house is not owned by Dimas Martín but by his wife, who had not been a party to the procedure. In this regard, the Court recalls that Dimas' wife "not only has had perfect knowledge of the case but has also been a party to it, where she has testified as an investigated party". In fact, if the charges against her were dropped, it was because it was considered proven that the true promoter of the works was Dimas Martín, who is the one who has been sentenced to bear the costs of the demolition. "She cannot try to take advantage of or benefit from enjoying a clearly illegal house with a pool," the ruling concludes, also confirming that part of the sentence.