The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has agreed to address a “personal requirement” to the mayor of Yaiza, Óscar Noda, warning him that he will impose fines if the City Council continues without delivering the file with which it is intended to legalize the Princesa Yaiza hotel, owned by businessman Juan Francisco Rosa.
The Second Section of the Contentious Chamber of the TSJC requested this documentation from the Consistory on November 4, 2020 and the provision, which was appealed, has been final since January 26. “However, despite the time elapsed, it does not appear that to date the Yaiza City Council has proceeded to comply with the provisions of the same”, the new resolution of the Chamber states, which describes the Consistory's delay as “excessive”.
For this reason, it orders the mayor to reiterate that he proceed with the execution of the provision issued more than eight months ago or to make allegations, “warning him that in the event of non-compliance within one month of receiving the notification, coercive fines may be imposed”.
In this regard, it refers to article 112 of the Law regulating Contentious-Administrative Jurisdiction, which authorizes magistrates to impose fines “of one hundred and fifty to one thousand five hundred euros on authorities, officials or agents who fail to comply with the requirements of the Court or the Chamber, as well as reiterate these fines until full execution of the judicial ruling, without prejudice to other patrimonial responsibilities that may arise”. Even, this article contemplates the possibility of “deducing the appropriate testimony of individuals to demand the criminal responsibility that may correspond”, in case of serious and repeated breaches.
Almost two decades without executing the sentence
The request for this documentation occurred within the procedure for executing the judgment that declared the hotel illegal in 2003, and which remains unexecuted almost two decades later.
After the approval of the new Yaiza General Plan, Rosa tried to request a new license, but the municipal reports concluded that it was illegal and unlegalizable, even despite the increase in buildability allowed by the new plan. Specifically, they concluded that it still had 5,116 square meters more than allowed, that the habitable area in basements exceeded by about 1,000 square meters and that the occupation above ground was also well above the established parameters, and even warned of the need to demolish part of the construction.
However, in December 2017, the Yaiza Governing Board granted the businessman a building permit for several minor interventions, valued at just over 36,000 euros, for the “adaptation of the physical reality to urban planning”. In that agreement, it was indicated that it would proceed “in a later phase of the file to pronounce on the legalization of the Princesa Yaiza tourist hotel establishment”.
During the processing of the application for this license, the businessman submitted different projects and plans up to four times, and even the different measurements provided by the property did not coincide. The last one was delivered on October 26, 2017 and two months later the City Council granted him the license, as a preliminary step to the legalization attempt.
Now, what the TSJC continues to demand is all that file, including the different projects and plans presented by the property, to decide whether to authorize access to the facilities to carry out the necessary checks. This request to access the hotel was raised within the procedure for executing the ruling that declared the Princesa Yaiza illegal, to guarantee that the project and what has been executed now correspond to reality, which did not happen when it was built. And it is that in addition to the fact that the license was illegal -as determined by the judgment that upheld the appeals of the Cabildo and the César Manrique Foundation-, the work carried out at the time did not even conform to what had been authorized.
For the granting of this and other licenses, the then mayor, José Francisco Reyes, was already convicted in the Yate case; while his successor in office, Gladys Acuña, was convicted of crimes of malfeasance, having granted an illegal permit to this same businessman for the opening of the Stratvs winery.
