The Criminal Court number 3 of Arrecife has acquitted the builder Antonio Caro and the architect Federico Echevarría of a crime against land planning and the environment within the framework of the La Bufona case due to the statute of limitations of the crimes. This case judged both promoters for building chalets on rustic land on land that was not their property on the outskirts of Arrecife.
The Court thus understands that criminal responsibility is extinguished and declares the payment of procedural costs ex officio. The sentence, which is not final, may be appealed within ten days.
This case, which dates back to the beginning of the century, has already been judged and the Justice then sentenced both defendants to six months in prison. After an appeal to the Second Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas, the sentences were reduced in February 2017. However, this same Chamber ruled in July 2018 that the proceedings were null and void, reversed the actions and ordered the oral trial to be held again. The Public Prosecutor's Office had then requested that the owners of the homes under discussion be called to the proceedings. Among them, the president of the Popular Party of Lanzarote, Ástrid Pérez.
In the new trial, during several sessions that took place in June 2023, the Prosecutor's Office described the events as a continuing crime against land planning. It requested four years in prison for each of the promoters Caro and Echevarría, special disqualification from the right to passive suffrage during the term of the sentence and a fine of six months at ten euros a day, as well as six months of disqualification from exercising a profession related to real estate development and housing construction.
As civil liability, the Public Prosecutor's Office had then requested the demolition of the illegally constructed works between houses one to 12 of plots A1, A2 and houses of plot A3 number 33 and 34 and to restore the altered physical reality. In this case, only in the part that invades rustic land to the north.
The case dates back to October 1999, when the Murillo family filed a complaint with the Civil Guard for the construction of 53 single-family homes within the Partial Plan of La Bufona. The defendants carried out the construction works, erected a wall and sold the first houses to different individuals. After that, the different owners carried out conditioning works. Among them, swimming pools, pergolas or paving. Now the Chamber considers that the crimes, committed two decades ago, have prescribed.
