The Court of First Instance number 3 of Arrecife has classified as rustic the properties of the old Partial Plan of Playa Quemada, in the municipality of Yaiza, which would open the door to building a golf course, 300 tourist beds and 1,600 beds distributed among chalets, bungalows and other uses between Puerto Calero and Playa Blanca. As reported by the Court's Communication Office to La Voz, the judicially appointed expert has classified the land as rustic.
The judicial decision is also supported by the registry notes where these plots appear as rustic land. The judicial decision thus puts an end to the possibility of creating a luxury tourist development in an area that has avoided massification and tourist development. The Partial Plan of Costa Playa Quemada was promoted by the company Prosolmar S.A, approved in 1993 and published in the Boletín Oficial de Canarias in January 1994. However, it was never executed.
The delay in its promotion allowed the procedure to be declared expired and reclassify the land as rustic. However, the company has fought for years in the courts to get the land to recover the consideration of urban. The rumors about this plan have been rekindled with the news that the Arrecife Court of Instruction is going to auction ten properties from this partial plan, with an area of more than 316,500 square meters.
Upon finding discrepancies in the land category, a Court sent an official letter to the Cabildo de Lanzarote in 2023 to certify whether these properties were rustic or developable. The economic difference between one land category and another is palpable. A 2022 appraisal stated that the lands, considered entirely rustic, were worth around four million euros. In contrast, with the developable category, a 2016 appraisal increased the value of the developer's urbanization rights to 25.3 million euros.
The property took advantage of the fall of the General Urban Planning Plan of Yaiza to try to reclassify the land again. However, the tourism moratorium approved in Lanzarote in 1998 had already ruled the temporary suspension of new urban planning licenses on tourist locations in order to review the island planning. Among them, that of Playa Quemada.
Despite the fall of the Yaiza General Plan, the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands ruled in 2018 that the developer exceeded the nine years that the law granted it to execute the Partial Plan Costa Playa Quemada without carrying out the works. The company had until December 2002 to execute it, but did not do so.
In its legal battle, the company Prosolmar SA had the defense of the convicted lawyer Felipe Fernández Camero, who must serve ten years in prison for another legal case, awaiting the resolution of the appeals filed before the Supreme.
The loss of urban development rights over this plot are also based on Ley 6/2001. In 2001, Canarias approved the Ley de Medidas Urgentes en Materia de Ordenación del Territorio y del Turismo, popularly known as the Ley de Moratoria, which extinguished those partial plans with tourist destination that had been definitively approved before 1995.