The First Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National Court has rejected the appeals filed by the entity Papagayo Arena SL, owner of the illegal hotel Sandos Papagayo, in which it requested the precautionary suspension of the new coastal demarcation of 100 meters wide and that leaves almost all of the hotel within the public maritime-terrestrial domain.
A ministerial order of July 2, 2024, set the new width of the easement at 100 meters in several plots of the Las Coloradas Partial Plan, among which is the Sandos Papagayo. This order has been appealed by the Yaiza City Council and also by the hotel's property.
In said ministerial order, the General Directorate of Coasts and the Sea, dependent on the Government of Spain, urged the Canary Islands Coast Demarcation to "rectify the legal registry situations" that contradict the new demarcation.
To request the precautionary suspension of the demarcation, the company argued before the National Court that "the protection easement imposes significant limitations on the right of property" and that its application "would generate irreversible situations" and would call into question the hotel activity." In addition, it argued that "there are no public or third-party interests" that are affected by the precautionary suspension.
However, the Chamber stressed that it does not appreciate "the existence of a right" of the company that needs "provisional and urgent protection" and that "general interests must prevail." In addition, it pointed out that if the precautionary measure were considered, it would be the public interest that would suffer a "serious disturbance", since the ministerial resolution has "the sole purpose" of protecting the public maritime-terrestrial domain.
Shared competences and clashes between Executives
The General Directorate of Coasts of the Government of the Canary Islands, dependent on Coalición Canaria, authorized at the beginning of this 2025 two sea accesses to the illegal Sandos Papagayo hotel, thus ignoring the criteria of the Directorate of Coasts of the Government of Spain, which issued an unfavorable report.
However, this situation does not imply any change in the irregular situation in the complex, despite the fact that Coalición Canaria in Yaiza defended that this permit "reinforces the legality of the actions carried out around the hotel." The property still has to demolish the public access road to the beach that it crossed with the construction of the hotel.
Last summer, in the middle of August, the Government group of the Cabildo de Lanzarote (Coalición Canaria and the Partido Popular) approved the tourist authorization of this controversial illegal hotel, which together with the Son Bou and the Princesa Yaiza, the latter two owned by Juan Francisco Rosa, has not yet legalized its situation. In addition, they depend on the Yaiza City Council granting their hotel license.
A suspended General Plan and a former mayor in prison for granting illegal licenses
The General Plan of Yaiza, which had been approved in 2014, was partially annulled in May 2018 and then fully by the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands in 2022 for lacking the mandatory report from Coasts.
The Papagayo Arena license was among another twenty licenses declared illegal and annulled by the Courts and that led the former mayor of Yaiza Juan Francisco Reyes to prison.
The authorization of the Sandos Papagayo was declared null by the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands in 2007 for committing serious urban infractions, including appropriating a public road of access to a beach and occupying more space than allowed. Then, in 2016 it was also declared criminal by the Provincial Court of Las Palmas, which sentenced the former mayor of Yaiza José Francisco Reyes to six years in prison.
In 2016, the Yaiza City Council concluded that the then known as Papagayo Arena was unlegalizable and rejected the legalization project submitted by the property. In 2021, the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands rejected the attempt to legalize the Sandos Papagayo and annulled an agreement between the Yaiza consistory and the property.
To date, the Papagayo Arena has remained open to the public, hosting tourists and receiving money from public subsidies for employment training, despite the fact that it does not have the necessary authorizations to carry out the activity, that it is built on a public access road to a beach and has one more floor.