The Second Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) has issued a ruling annulling the agreement reached between the Yaiza City Council and the Papagayo Arena to try to legalize the hotel, thus upholding an appeal from the Cabildo and the César Manrique Foundation.
Said agreement was judicially approved in November 2019 by the Contentious-Administrative Court number 1 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, but both the Cabildo and the FCM filed an appeal. The reason is that, although after the Justice annulled the license of the Papagayo Arena Hotel, an incident of execution of the sentence was opened in which both institutions were part, they were not summoned in this procedure.
In addition, among other issues, in their appeal they argued that the agreement "does not conform to the legal system due to fraud of law." In this regard, it should be remembered that the Yaiza City Council itself concluded in 2016 that the Papagayo Arena Hotel was impossible to legalize, rejecting the project presented by the property for its legalization. The Consistory warned then that a partial demolition of the establishment should be carried out, among other things because it closed access to Las Coloradas beach, occupying two pedestrian lanes with the building.
However, in April of last year, the hotel property requested the termination of the execution incident, understanding that the sentence had been executed, and this based on the agreement, through judicial mediation, which had been reached with the Yaiza City Council. The Papagayo Arena argued that the sentence had been executed "from the moment in which the Yaiza City Council required it for the legalization of the hotel, given that the sentence did not judge the hotel building to the regulations and urban planning of application and that the result of the legalization request is outside the scope of the sentence."
"It is not possible to accede to such a claim in that the sentence has not been executed in all its terms," argues, however, the Second Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the TSJC in an order dated February 15. "The fact that there is an extrajudicial agreement between the Yaiza City Council and the hotel property does not in itself entail the file due to supervening loss of its object," adds the court, which points out that "the execution of the sentence requires the initiation and processing of the appropriate legalization file, with a hearing of the interested parties."
"In short, once the City Council has resolved on the legalization of the work, and the appropriate license that legalizes the construction has been issued, the sentence may be considered executed. And in the event that said license cannot be obtained, the building will be without a license and, therefore, doomed to demolition," adds the chamber.
This order is added to the ruling in which the agreement reached between the Yaiza City Council and the Papagayo Arena is annulled, in which the judicial approval of the same is revoked, ordering the actions to be reversed "to the immediately previous state in which both the Island Council of Lanzarote and the César Manrique Foundation should have been properly summoned."