According to the announcement in the Official Gazette, "the general director of Coasts
agreed on July 19, 2006, the declaration of public utility and the initiation of legal procedures for the forced expropriation of the property on which the hotel called Papagayo Arena is located and the adjacent land on a surface of 40,085 square meters, and owned by Explotaciones Nueva Valencia, S.L.".
The Official Gazette of the Province indicates that "it is necessary to submit to
public information the reference file so that people
who wish to do so can request the rectification of possible
errors or formulate the allegations they deem appropriate".
Thus, the twelve floors built on the cove of Las Coloradas beach, in Playa Blanca could disappear in approximately two years, since the objective is to proceed with the demolition of the hotel and leave the beach clear for the use and enjoyment of citizens.
Following the requirements established by the Forced Expropriation Law, the General Directorate of Coasts invokes reasons of general interest to proceed with the expropriation of the ownership of plots 1 and 2 of the beach on which the building was built, as well as the hotel itself. In this way, the Papagayo Arena Hotel could be of public ownership within a year, if the negotiations with the owning company come to fruition, without having to resort to legal channels, an extreme that would prolong the resolution of the file. Once the owner of the land and the hotel is the Ministry of the Environment, the execution of the demolition project would become effective in about six months.
Initiative of the Vice President of the Cabildo
Last July, the General Director of Coasts, José Fernández landed in Lanzarote and appeared before the media to announce that the institution he directs had initiated the procedures for the expropriation of the southern hotel. The situation created by that building built on the beachfront next to the Los Ajaches Natural Park and the need to act against it to recover the cove of Las Coloradas and eliminate the profound impact that this macro hotel has produced in the area, was raised to the General Director of Coasts by the Vice President of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Manuel Fajardo Palarea, after the socialist group entered the Island Government in June 2005.
The Hotel is open clandestinely
Today anyone can reserve one of the almost five hundred rooms with capacity for a total of 774 beds, which are located just above the cove of Las Coloradas, and spend a few days in its four-star facilities, without knowing that they are in a hotel establishment built with a building permit granted by the mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, and whose legality is being decided in the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands, since it was appealed in 2000 by the then president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, the socialist Enrique Pérez Parrilla.
The tourist is also unaware that the Papagayo Arena is currently an illegally open establishment because it lacks the mandatory tourist authorization for opening and operation, a license that the hotel requested from the Cabildo, but which was denied last August by a resolution of the Cabildo issued by the then accidental President and current vice president, Manuel Fajardo Palarea. Due to this denial, the hotel has also been removed from the Registry of Tourist Operators of the Canary Islands and is open to the public "clandestinely" as it lacks the tourist permit that was denied a year ago. From now on, those staying in any of the 12 floors of the hotel are in a building in the process of expropriation for demolition.
The history of the Papagayo Arena
On June 1, 1998, a request for a building permit for a future hotel arrived at the southern Consistory from the company Explotaciones Hoteleras Nueva Valencia S.L., which would be built on two plots of the Las Coloradas cove, included in the Partial Plan of the area, approved a decade earlier, as municipal land.
That same day the mayor Reyes, issues his positive opinion, despite the fact that the report prepared by the Technical Office of Yaiza was negative because the project presented is not endorsed by any professional association, it also exceeded the permitted height by seven floors and eliminates an existing pedestrian crossing between plots 1 and 2 to facilitate access for bathers to the beach, who now have to access the beach through a lateral cliff, among other aspects.
The controversial statements about César Manrique
Despite the negative reports, José Francisco Reyes grants the building permit for the Papagayo Arena, among many others, that same morning, just four days before the revision of the PIOT was published in the Official Gazette of the Province of Las Palmas, which had been agreed by the Plenary of the Cabildo on May 21 of that year. Therefore, the work was already approved and the reforms of the PIOT included the moratorium that prevented new constructions.
One of the justifications that the mayor of Yaiza wielded before the society of Lanzarote to defend the existence of the Papagayo Arena, were the controversial statements published in LA VOZ in its issue of April 7, in which he assured that César Manrique "wanted to make hotels there, he thought it was fine, and he said it in front of me".
Today the Papagayo Arena is one of the 27 hotels and more than 12,000 tourist beds that the Cabildo has appealed before the TSJC, it is the Papagayo Arena, a procedure that is in an advanced state of processing and on which the Court could rule in mid-2007. If the sentence is favorable to the Cabildo of Lanzarote, it could be an important boost for the procedure that the Ministry of the Environment has initiated this week, because even the value of what is expropriated would plummet and the processing that would lead to the final demolition of the Papagayo Arena Hotel.