The architect Ángel García Puertas, who among other things has been hired by Juan Francisco Rosa to try to legalize the Princesa Yaiza and Son Bou hotels, has also testified as an expert for the businessman in the Stratvs case trial, in which he has defended a report prepared by himself, in which he maintains that the winery complies with the law.
García Puertas, who years before starting to work for Rosa had been head of the Technical Office of the Yaiza City Council -between 1988 and 1991-, and who has also been linked to the businessman Luis Lleó, has even stated that although Stratvs only had permission to build an underground warehouse winery of 900 meters, in reality it could have built "13,000 or 14,000".
"And why didn't Juan Francisco Rosa then ask for permission to build 13,000?", the lawyer for the private prosecution asked with surprise, considering that one of the crimes being judged in the case is for having built much more than authorized in the license. "That's a good question," the architect simply replied.
"Everything below ground level does not count"
According to Ángel García Puertas' theory, the previous Yaiza General Plan did not establish the surface area that could be built below ground level. Furthermore, he has repeatedly insisted that "everything below ground level does not count", so he excludes both the winery and the restaurant area, which he maintains is also completely underground. And he has defended the same with respect to the terraces, ramps and pergolas. "Urbanistically, they count as zero".
"It was authorized", "it complied with all the regulations", stated Rosa's expert, who maintained that the Yaiza General Plan did allow the construction of wineries in La Geria. Regarding the Island Plan, although all the technicians from the PIOT Office of the Cabildo who have testified in the trial have confirmed that this document prohibited authorizing Stratvs and that the winery is illegal, Rosa's architect has maintained the opposite. According to García Puertas, when the PIOT indicates that any work that implies "earthmoving" is prohibited in La Geria, one should not "take the whole for a phrase". "It is a declaration of intentions, but it is inconsistent with the rest of the Plan," he argued. "It is clear that no one noticed, neither did I," he added.
"When the winery was closed, they called me"
Since then, Ángel García Puertas has worked on private projects, and in recent years for Juan Francisco Rosa. "When the winery was closed, they called me," he said in response to questions from the lawyer for the private prosecution, assuring that it was there when he met Rosa "professionally", who hired him to make this report. Later, when the lawyer insisted on whether they had had other ties later, he acknowledged several more.
On the one hand, Rosa also hired him to try to legalize the Princesa Yaiza and Son Bou hotels, which have had final judgments for years and a partial demolition order issued by the City Council. On the other hand, he has confirmed that he is also the architect of the Stratvs Hotel, which Rosa intended to open in the old Finca Las Salinas hotel. The works on that hotel had to be stopped years ago by the Yaiza City Council, for having started without a license, and the Heritage area of the Cabildo warned that irreparable damage had been caused to the heritage. Furthermore, a year ago another large-scale excavation that Rosa was carrying out next to that property was stopped, breaching the authorization he had, which was only for a small cistern.
A "small variation" in the size of the pre-existing house
Regarding the house that existed on the farm where Stratvs was built -which according to the license should be restored as a house, but which according to the instruction was demolished to build a larger one, where the store was installed-, the architect has recognized that there is "a small variation" in the size of the property. "It is not uncommon," he defended, putting the difference at 25 meters more. "The walls were very dilapidated", "the measurements may not match reality", he added in this regard.
Of the five experts hired by Rosa who have testified this Tuesday in the trial, another one has done so only in relation to that house. "It was in a dilapidated state," said José Luis Ferreiras, who made his report in 2016, almost a decade after the works were completed and Stratvs was inaugurated.
Regarding how he made his report, given that it is after the intervention, he stated that he applied "some tables from the College of Architects" on the elements he had, which were "a distribution plan" and "a series of photographs" on the previous state of the house. And so he concluded that only 30% of the property could be recovered. Regarding its current state, he has specified that he has only been able to see the exterior: "Not the interior, because that is sealed off".
"Maintains the aesthetics of the previous building"
However, he has defended that the "aesthetics" are the same as the property previously had. "It maintains the same typology, design and aesthetics of the previous building, but improving it in a fundamental way", he pointed out, thus indicating that the current building is not the one that existed, as the prosecution maintains.
Regarding his thesis that most of the house could not really be rehabilitated because it was "in ruins", the prosecutor has reminded him that the Canarian legislation establishes that when more than 50% of a construction cannot be recovered, it must be accredited with a technical project, which must be presented to the administration for it to certify it, which did not happen in this case.
In his statement, the expert has also maintained that the house was not included in any catalog of the municipality collecting its ethnographic values, nor in the Island Plan. In this regard, the Heritage technicians of the Cabildo who also testified as experts in the trial pointed out that "that does not mean that it lacks value" and stressed that it was protected by the Canary Islands Heritage Law. In fact, the authorization granted by the Government of the Canary Islands referred to the ethnographic value of the house, and that is why it only authorized its rehabilitation.
"Surprising" difference between Rosa's report and that of the Apmun
During Tuesday's session, a mining engineer, Antonio Merino, who was hired by Rosa to make several reports relating to the rofe extracted from La Geria during the Stratvs works, also testified. In one of them, he puts the amount of material that was excavated at 20,000 cubic meters and maintains that less than 3,000 were of picón. However, the official report of the Apmun raises the volume of the excavation to 40,000 cubic meters.
"It's surprising. There is a difference that is striking," said Rosa's expert, who maintained that the report of the Agency for the Protection of the Urban and Natural Environment of the Government of the Canary Islands is not as "precise" as his.
Specifically, he pointed out that the Apmun made its calculations "based on aerial flights", on "aerial photos", pointing out that it is "a coarser procedure". However, in another of his reports, in which he assures that the amount of picón was not increased in the Finca de Uga after the Stratvs works -the prosecution maintains that a good part of the material was transferred to that other property of Rosa-, the expert has stated that he also used aerial photos from Grafcan to calculate how much picón there was on the farm in 1998. "And are they accurate?", Rosa's lawyer asked him. "Yes," he replied.
The expert claims that he saw plans for projects that do not appear in the case
Regarding how he calculated the volume of the Stratvs excavation, he stated that he used execution plans of the winery, but he could not specify which project. Both the lawyer for the prosecution and the prosecutor have emphasized this, since there is not a single project in the case for the restaurant area. The only one there is -signed by the defendant Miguel Ángel Armas Matallana- is only for the winery, which also does not conform to what was built, so they have insisted on asking him how he could have calculated the total of the work and where he got those projects from.
"It coincided with what was built," they pointed out, without being able to explain who was the author of those excavation projects that he claims he was "given". "The width coincided," he replied again.
As for the fifth expert who testified this Tuesday at the request of Rosa's defense, it was the agricultural expert Leandro Caraballo, who directed the transplant of some palm trees in Stratvs years after the inauguration. That intervention motivated a sanctioning file from the Heritage area of the Cabildo, since the authorization that had been granted was breached, among other things altering the socos that were in the area.
Furthermore, Caraballo also processed for Juan Francisco Rosa a territorial qualification project with which he tried to legalize Stratvs years after its construction. However, when that file was sent to the Cabildo -"because it is the competent body", the expert confirmed to questions from the private prosecution-, the businessman himself ended up withdrawing his request.
Three sanctioning files from the City Council and a sealing order
Along with five experts from Juan Francisco Rosa and another cited by the private prosecution, this Tuesday the jurist from Yaiza Delia López, who had been called by the Prosecutor's Office, also testified as an expert. The lawyer, who works in the legal advice of the Consistory, intervened in the three sanctioning files that the City Council opened to Stratvs years after this criminal case began.
Delia López has recalled that one was opened for each activity: one for the winery, another for the restaurant and one more for the store. However, only the one for the restaurant was concluded, ordering its sealing. Furthermore, she has recalled that Rosa appealed that decision in the Courts, which endorsed the Consistory's action and maintained the closure.
As for the rest of the facilities, they ended up being closed by court order, as a precautionary measure ordered by the investigating judge of the Stratvs case. Regarding those files regarding the winery and the store, the jurist has indicated that they could not complete them due to a lack of technicians, since among other things the secretary had just been disqualified by another conviction. Then they requested inter-administrative collaboration from the Cabildo, then presided over by Pedro San Ginés, but they did not receive that help.
In its response, the Island Corporation recommended that they stop those files "due to criminal prejudice", that is, because the case that is now being judged was already initiated, and that has among the accused not only Juan Francisco Rosa, but also technicians and public officials of the Government of the Canary Islands, the Cabildo and the Yaiza City Council, in addition to those who were already convicted in the first piece.