The civic association The sun rises for everyone filed a complaint last April with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office against the Yaiza City Council and the Government of the Canary Islands for their inaction regarding an illegal hotel that continues to operate in the tourist town of Playa Blanca, the Papagayo Arenas.
The Public Prosecutor's Office of Arrecife, to whom Anti-Corruption referred the complaint, has a maximum period of six months, until October 6, to decide whether it appreciates facts constituting a crime.
Illegal licenses in Playa Blanca
In Playa Blanca, at least three hotels that have had their urban planning licenses annulled by the courts remain open to the public and have not yet completed the procedure to determine whether the works are legalizable or not. The legalization procedure continues in the Yaiza City Council, under judicial supervision in execution of judgment, despite the fact that more than 16 years have passed since the Justice declared them illegal.
The licenses of these hotels were declared null after the judgment of the Yate case, dictated by the Second Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas in April 2017. This judicial resolution condemned the former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes for urban planning malfeasance, administrative malfeasance, money laundering and three bribery offenses, among other crimes.
In said judicial sentence it is stated that the then mayor of Yaiza received money from some developers - without specifying who - and that the increase in his assets came from criminally granting urban planning licenses.
The case of Papagayo Arenas
The civic association The sun rises for everyone decided to file the complaint with the Prosecutor's Office when it learned through a digital newspaper that the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands had upheld in December of last year an appeal by the owner of Papagayo Arena in which it revoked the ruling of the Court of Contentious-Administrative number 5 of Las Palmas. This Court had ordered the restoration of "urban and territorial legality" and opened the door to the total or partial demolition of the hotel.
However, the TSJC ruling urges to continue the procedure of legalizing the works of one of the largest hotels on the island, against the criteria held by the previous Government Group of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, which defended the uselessness of concluding that legalization procedure, given the illegal nature of the works for failing to comply with tourism and urban regulations.
According to the Courts, the Sandos Papagayo Beach Resort, formerly known as Papagayo Arenas, fails to comply with municipal planning and occupies a public road of access to the beach, which the hotel has made its own and has integrated into its construction and facilities. Thus, it has taken away from the population the right to access that beach through public land, as part of the state public domain collected by the Spanish Constitution.
This civic association denounces the case of Papagayo Arena because initially it called their "especially attention" and after investigating it "outraged" them. This is revealed by the member and lawyer of the association, Agustín Bravo de Laguna, in an interview with La Voz.
"Let's say that Papagayo Arenas did like some hotel in Lanzarote in the seventies of the twentieth century, appropriating the beach, only that this is done now in the twenty-first century," says Bravo de Laguna.
The decision to go against this hotel is because "it is the most egregious case we have seen", but he understands that the Prosecutor's Office should "investigate other licenses of other hotels that are operating despite having their licenses annulled in criminal judgment. Licenses in the process of legalization do not exist, it is an absolutely unprecedented concept in the world of law", he says.
The question they asked themselves from The sun rises for everyone was whether "they were going to continue with the legalization files all their lives" (one dates from 2013 and another from 2019, both unresolved). The times in the Courts are what they are and in the meantime certain hotels operate without any problem and, in a clear case of comparative grievance with those who do have their papers in order, obtain their income at the expense of public land and that we run out of beach".
Bravo de Laguna reminds the Government of the Canary Islands and the Yaiza City Council that "it has an inspection work" regarding tourist activity. In this sense, he adds that a few weeks ago the Arrecife City Council sealed three premises in the capital for operating without a license. In contrast, "in Playa Blanca all the hotels are acting freely without sanction, file, or anything".
Citizen discontent with administrations
Bravo de Laguna highlights that the occupation of a public road for lucrative purposes may constitute a criminal offense against land management. In this line, he states that "there is an even more serious fact, which is the distrust that occurs in the citizen before the public administration" with cases like this.
"Here the serious thing is the silence of the administrations. That is very serious because we do not know in whose hands we are, we do not know if they are defending the public interest. Now, with respect to this, they are not defending it and that is of a seriousness and consequences that are difficult to restore. If the democratic parties already act like this, people already lose faith and trust", he continues during a telephone conversation with La Voz.
The role of the Prosecutor's Office
The lawyer indicates that not only the Government of the Canary Islands and the Yaiza City Council have their responsibility, "which they have and quite a lot, and even more than one official should have jumped denouncing this", but he questions the work of the Public Prosecutor's Office.
"It is not acceptable that the Prosecutor's Office, which is part of a criminal enforcement procedure, is aware of these illegal licenses and has allowed this situation to perpetuate for more than six years," he says.
The civic association states that "the Prosecutor's Office should have investigated prior to our complaint why the judicial resolutions have not been complied with. The Prosecutor's Office has rested on its laurels. I do not understand a 109-page sentence, say that the mayor [José Francisco Reyes] has received money from all sides giving licenses and the beneficiaries of the fraudulent licenses nothing happens to them and is that they also continue to enjoy those fraudulent licenses. What is this? This is a banana republic", questions Bravo de Laguna.
Meanwhile, on the management of the Canarian Government and Yaiza, he defends that politicians "when they have to make decisions that affect us all, such as the issue of the appropriation of a beach in fact, here nobody says anything. It is a shame that the Government of the Canary Islands and the Yaiza City Council protect the licenses in the process of legalization against the citizens of the Canary Islands, who have been deprived of a beach", he continues.
In addition, he highlights that it is not common for hotels to be demolished in the Canary Islands, even if they are illegal. "In general, nothing is thrown away, the issue is that the businessman hides behind the jobs, the politician in the votes he is going to lose and it is all a scam".
Along with Bravo de Laguna, as a member and lawyer, the complaint has been signed by the entire board of directors of the association, composed of the president Rosario Miranda, professor of Philosophy; the vice president, María Luisa Pita Toledo, former head of the Environmental Health Service of the Government of the Canary Islands; the secretary, Óscar Méndez, who was head of the Heritage Service of the Government of the Canary Islands; the treasurer, Óscar Bermejo, who is an economist.
The sun rises for everyone was established in February 2016, in order to defend and protect the general interest. This civic association has been especially active in controversial issues in the capital of Gran Canaria, such as the controversial implementation of the Metroguagua and water management. In fact, it is a party in the abbreviated procedure that is followed in the criminal jurisdiction against 14 directors of Emalsa, the mixed water company of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, for misappropriation and disloyal administration.
To conclude, Bravo de Laguna ironically assures that he is considering changing the name of the association to the title The sun rises for almost everyone.