He saw "a problem" that "threatened" the Costa Papagayo Partial Plan, and decided that the "problem" should become him. This could summarize a good part of the statement that Juan Francisco Rosa gave in court on last February 19th, as an accused for the occupation of a public green area with the Kikoland. The situation of that plot was already described as "Kafkaesque" almost ten years ago by the drafter of the Yaiza General Plan, Jorge Coderch, but in light of what this criminal case is revealing, it fell short.
What is being investigated in this procedure is an agreement signed in 2004, by which the City Council ceded public land to Rosa for free for 50 years, renewable for another 50. However, in his statement, the businessman focused on placing the origin much further back, to defend why the City Council signed that agreement - without any technical or legal report - and even to ensure that he could have claimed "much more". "The property was mine," he argued in his statement, despite the fact that it was municipal land intended for public green areas.
The origin of his version lies in the development of that Partial Plan -"urban surrealism", according to Coderch- and in the obscure role played by the Yaiza City Council. In his statement, Rosa blamed the "mismanagement" of the City Council at the time for not having correctly registered the green areas and roads that corresponded to it when the Plan began to be developed in the 70s. But ultimately, what he ended up admitting is that he ended up benefiting from that irregular situation.
The distribution had indeed been made and the buildability corresponding to each businessman and each plot - including his - was defined, as well as what was the public land in the plan. However, the land that had remained as municipal property ended up passing through several hands, until it ended up in Rosa's hands. According to him, he was "forced" to do so. "I was willing to spend whatever it took", "I was buying a solution", he declared in court.
The first step - difficult to explain, given that due to the use that land had, it should not have been susceptible to sales - occurred when the Social Security seized the 260,000 square meters of the City Council, due to a debt that the City Council maintained. Afterwards, it put them up for auction in the late 90s and the land ended up in private hands, despite being intended for roads and green areas,
The buyers, constituted in the company Getsu No Denwa, paid 10 million pesetas at the time (about 60,000 euros), when an urban plot in that area would have cost about 60 times more. However, the first thing they did after the purchase was to claim alleged building rights, even filing a lawsuit against the City Council in the courts. "That was worth nothing," Rosa acknowledged to the judge.
"They were important people who knew what they were doing"
In his statement, the businessman repeated several times that he had nothing to do with that initial purchase to which he insisted on referring. In reality, at no time did they ask him if he had been behind that operation - which is not what is being investigated - but Rosa did want to emphasize again and again that he was not. "I did not go to the auction, nor did I buy, nor anything like that. I don't think I even found out about the auction", he assured on several occasions, in answers that extended far beyond what was being asked by the lawyer of the prosecution, exercised by Carlos Meca, Griselda Martínez and Pablo Ramírez.
According to Rosa, the land was bought by "some gentlemen from Las Palmas". "They were lawyers, they were notaries, they were engineers, they were important people who knew what they were doing", he added. According to his version, the first news he had of the purchase of that land, which later ended up in his hands, was when "one good day some technicians from Las Palmas come and put some milestones in front of all the plots everywhere".
At that time, Juan Francisco Rosa had just started the construction of the Princesa Yaiza hotel and on both sides of his land were these plots, which should have been public green areas, and which ended up housing private facilities that complement the services of his hotel, with children's areas, leisure and sports.
"I asked those guys why they were putting those stones there, and they told me that a company from Las Palmas was sending them, because they had bought the land from the Social Security. That seemed so strange to me... I knew that those were public roads, green areas," he admitted. According to his statement, only "three or four hours later", one of those "gentlemen from Las Palmas", with whom he claims he had not had any previous relationship, called him on the phone. "He told me: We are the owners of those lands. We have bought 260,000 meters of the rest of a parent property."
"You know what, Juan Francisco? They have the right"
"I was very worried," Rosa said, explaining that his first reaction was to go to the Yaiza City Council in person. There he did not clarify with whom he met, claiming that he did not remember, but he did relate word for word that alleged conversation. "You know what, Juan Francisco? They have the right to what they are saying," he assured that they told him in the City Council, which in reality never acceded to those claims and in the courts defended just the opposite, in a lawsuit that was finally withdrawn by the plaintiffs.
According to Rosa, these businessmen argued that they should be treated as just another owner of the Partial Plan, and that it was necessary to go back almost three decades, annul all the licenses granted until then, create a compensation board and re-divide the buildability among all the plots, with each owner contributing a percentage of public areas.
"That worried me a lot, because I saw them as threatening, what they really wanted was to do business," Rosa declared. Afterwards, according to his own words, he was the one who bought that company and ended up putting himself "in the position of the gentlemen from Las Palmas".
He did not clarify why they agreed to sell it to him - if according to him they had millionaire building rights - but the fact is that Rosa bought the company Getsu No Denwa, which only had that plot as its only asset. He assured that he did it because he was "forced", because he saw himself "in a tremendous mess" that could affect his project and that of the rest of the hoteliers in the Plan. But as soon as he bought it, he began to demand from the City Council "exactly the same" that they were demanding.
Surprisingly, when the lawyer of the popular accusation asked him about what that claim would have affected his own plot of the Princesa Yaiza, and the buildability that corresponded to him there - which was what the whole story that he defended in the Court revolved around - Rosa went on to deny the greater. "You are confused. What does the Princesa Yaiza plot have to do with that?", he replied to the lawyer.
"We were talking about a lot of money, because I had the right"
"I offered the City Council to seek an agreement, because I had the right to that buildability that those previous gentlemen were claiming. A third of the buildability belonged to me, and we were talking about a lot of money, because I had the right," he argued.
"But you knew it was a green area. Do you know that a green area has zero buildability?", the lawyer of the prosecution, Nora Ferrer, asked him, reminding him of what he himself had said a few minutes before. And it is that in his statement, Rosa himself said that he was "surprised" by the initial purchase of that land in the auction, because "that was worth nothing" and "the only thing left were streets, green areas, an educational plot and a health plot".
Regarding how much he paid for that land, the lawyer of the prosecution pointed to a price of 35 pesetas per square meter, which would be equivalent to just over 9 million pesetas. That is to say, that the businessmen would have sold it to him for a figure similar to or even lower than the one they had paid in the auction, although Rosa did not confirm or deny it, stating that he did not "remember" the price he paid per meter. What he did say is that it was sold at auction for 10 million pesetas, when he had paid 600 million for an urban plot in that same area, that of the Princesa Yaiza. "Weren't you surprised?" the lawyer insisted. "And what do I have to do with that? That is a problem that does not concern me. As if they had given it to those gentlemen. Look, and why didn't the City Council go to the auction at that time to buy those lands?" he replied in a defiant tone, before being interrupted by both the lawyer and the magistrate, who reminded him that he was not the one asking the questions.
"I want the same thing that is put in that lawsuit"
According to his testimony, before buying the company he called the rest of the businessmen of the Partial Plan. "I told them that we had to find a solution, but most of them said: No, no, no, no. We have our license, we have our plot, and I am not going to participate in any of these strange things. I'm not going to do it. Let them do what they want."
However, Juan Francisco Rosa did get fully involved. "I was worried because I was with the construction of my hotel on the first floor, and the gift that came to me is that they were going to paralyze the work," he declared in court to justify his actions. The truth is that this paralysis never occurred, and in fact three years later the construction of the Princesa Yaiza was completed without any impediment. It was with his hotel already finished and inaugurated when he bought Getsu No Denwa.
Afterwards, he went to the City Council and said: "I want the same thing that is put in this lawsuit". "We are not going to give you that, not even crazy. Please, here we all have to function", he affirmed that they told him in the City Council. Then, according to Rosa, they began to negotiate an agreement. He affirms that he committed himself to ceding the land to the City Council and to withdraw the lawsuit (in reality, at another time he recognized that it had already been withdrawn by the previous owners since the sale of the company was formalized), in exchange for keeping the use of 30,000 square meters, in part of which he installed the Kikoland.
"But you know that it was mandatory to cede those lands free of charge to the City Council," the lawyer stressed. "I don't have to. They were my lands," Rosa replied. "Maybe I had to have maintained myself and demanded my buildability. Maybe I had to have done that, because the City Council is not mine. Maybe I had to endure and ask for my buildability, which I did not do, because it seemed to me that it was not fair," Rosa added
However, it did seem "fair" that the City Council would cede him the use of part of that land for life - 100 years, including the concession and the possibility of extension - and that it would allow him to build a private facility that has functioned as a leisure annex to his hotel. And also that the partial plan would be left without the public green areas that corresponded to the residents of the municipality.
The agreement he signed using this strategy was already annulled by the Yaiza City Council in 2016, based on a devastating opinion of the Canary Islands Advisory Council, which concluded that this agreement was illegal and that "the only thing that the company could have agreed with the City Council was the documentary formalization of the mandatory assignments". Afterwards, the courts have confirmed this decision, rejecting all the appeals presented by Rosa in the contentious-administrative channel and confirming that this cession was illegal, although to this day the land has not yet been returned to the municipality.
As a result of this file becoming known, the then councilors of Podemos in the Cabildo, Carlos Meca, Pablo Ramírez and Griselda Martínez, decided to file a complaint so that criminal responsibilities could also be determined, which was what gave rise to this case. Along with Rosa, the then mayor, José Francisco Reyes, the former secretary of the Corporation, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, and the one who was the administrator of Getsu No Denwa after its acquisition by Rosa, Juan Luis Lorenzo, are charged in the procedure. In addition, the judge also agreed months ago to summon as investigated all the former CC councilors who governed together with Reyes, and who voted in favor of that agreement in the Plenary, despite the fact that it did not have a single technical or legal report.
