Photos: Sergio Betancort
The Yaiza City Council has had to seal off a new illegal work by businessman Juan Francisco Rosa, ordering its stoppage. On this occasion, the businessman requested a license to build a cistern and ended up carrying out a huge excavation next to the Finca Las Salinas hotel, where in turn he had already carried out illegal works.
"The excavation exceeded what had been allowed. It exceeded what was authorized", the City Council has confirmed to La Voz, which has not specified the dimensions of the cistern for which the permit was granted, nor those of the excavation that was finally carried out, although its magnitude can be seen in the images captured by La Voz de Lanzarote.
What the Consistory has confirmed is that the license was requested through one of Rosa's companies, Salmepa SL, which in turn has had Bodegas Stratvs SL as its sole administrator and which is currently listed as "extinct". And once again, the result is the same as that which has marked all the businessman's known works, both in Yaiza and in other municipalities: what he was executing had nothing to do with what had been authorized.
Months of neighborhood complaints
On this occasion, the works that were being carried out next to the Finca Las Salinas hotel had received neighborhood complaints at least since last June, although it was at the end of August when the City Council finally executed the sealing and stopped the works.
Afterwards, the businessman presented allegations against this measure and, according to the Consistory, they are currently "studying them to give a response", so the file "remains open".
As for the neighborhood complaints, they began with the inconvenience caused by the work, given the dimensions of the excavation, and also by the alleged occupation of land from another adjoining plot. In addition, a witness claims that the aggregates extracted from the land were being transferred for use in a public work that is being carried out in the south of the island.
"Irreversible damage" to the protected property
The land where these works were being carried out was acquired by Rosa five years ago, when he bought the Finca Las Salinas hotel to transform it into the Stratvs Hotel. In May 2014, the City Council already had to stop the works that the businessman was carrying out on the property, since he started them without having any type of permit.
Juan Francisco Rosa requested a license to remodel the hotel after starting the works and finally obtained it in December of that year, so he was able to resume the works. However, he also ended up carrying out unauthorized works and causing "irreversible damage" to this protected property.
The first warning was given in June 2015 by a security guard from the Cabildo's Heritage area, who only six months after the license was granted denounced that "a large hole" had been opened in the facade, although the Cabildo did not take measures. Nor did it do so more than a year later, when two other inspection visits were carried out and they detected that the hole had been closed "by means of stones and cement", as well as many other damages caused to the heritage values of the property, as stated in a report dated July 2016.
Finally, another year had to pass before a new report from Patrimonio arrived, in August 2017, which concluded that "irreversible damage" had already been caused to the heritage values of this protected property and requested the precautionary stoppage of the works. And although those works were finally stopped then, months later others began on the plot, with the excavation that has now had to be sealed off by the City Council.
