The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has dismissed the appeal that the owner of the land of the "Islote del Francés" (a commercial company called "Inversiones Islote del Francés"), filed in 2019 against the municipal agreements that rejected the forced expropriation of said land and the determinations contained in the current General Urban Planning Plan of Arrecife (approved in 2004) that classified those lands as urban land "not consolidated", allocating them to public use.
The ruling of the High Court of the Canary Islands, which was issued on February 22, 2024, has put an end to a long judicial controversy in which the owner of the land "threatened" with compensation of 200 million euros to the city council if the public use of the land was maintained, with the argument that these lands were consolidated urban land and that the classification made by the 2004 General Plan was illegal, since a "consolidated" urban land can only be obtained by the city council by "expropriation", presenting a valuation of almost 200 million euros.
The controversy over the classification and the uses assigned to this piece of land was transferred to the new Supplementary General Planning Plan of Arrecife, in which, following the criteria of the municipal technicians, a definitive ordering of this piece of land has not been established until the courts rule on the matter.
The Judgment of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands dismisses all the claims of the owner of the land, both the challenge of the General Plan of Arrecife regarding the ordering of the Islote del Francés (confirming that it is "not consolidated" land), as well as the expropriation of the land (ratifying the inadmissibility of the expropriation for the public use assigned to them).
Land classification and legality of the current Arrecife PGO
Regarding the debate on the land classification of the Islote del Francés, the Chamber rejects the arguments that the property has wielded during these years (alleging that its rights were recognized with a previous final judgment) and considers that the previous judgment, issued by the same Court on October 19, 1993, did not classify the land as "consolidated urban", but only as "urban", without ascribing it to any category, hence, given the result of the expert evidence practiced in the procedure, the Court concludes that the land in question lacks the requirements to consider it "consolidated", so it dismisses the challenge of the general plan and confirms the legality of the current General Plan of the municipality that classifies it as "non-consolidated urban land" (which in practice is equivalent to developable land, since it has a similar legal regime in terms of rights and obligations).
The Chamber also rejects the expropriatory claim of the landowners, who requested compensation of 200 million euros from the city council for allocating to public use a "consolidated" land that could only be obtained by expropriation. In this regard, the High Court concludes that the way to obtain the land provided for in the current Arrecife PGO is correct and assumes that the city council will not have to pay absolutely anything to the property, since it will be the owners of other developable land who will have to pay them with resulting plots, but at the price of developable land, not consolidated urban land.
Conclusion of the Court
On this last issue, in the fourth basis of the Judgment, the Court concludes by declaring that "the General Plan of Arrecife has foreseen that the land of the General System that concerns us (SG-10) is obtained within a system of private execution (by mandatory and free transfer of the owners of the land of the sector to which it is attached), in such a way that the owners of land affected by the qualification of general systems attached to a sector of developable land will be fully compensated in the appropriate reparcelation or compensation project, by awarding, for not applying the expropriation, land in the sector to which they have been attached" (p. 16, the bold, italics and underlined are original).
In other words, the plaintiff entity, owner of the attached general system, will be awarded in the reparcelation project of the resulting plots corresponding to its subjective use, also constituting the reparcelation project the title of registration of its property", fully accepting the theses of the City Council of Arrecife, whose defense was in charge of the Lawyer María Elena Gutiérrez Morales (recently deceased).
The Judgment also condemns the owner of the land to pay the court costs. The owner may file an appeal against it, which would have to be resolved by the Supreme Court.
