The twelve floors built on the cove of Las Coloradas beach, in Playa Blanca could disappear in approximately two years. The General Directorate of Coasts of the Ministry of Environment initiated the expropriation process of the Papagayo Arena hotel last Wednesday, July 25th, after the Ministry declared Las Coloradas beach and the land on which the massive hotel stands of public utility. The purpose of starting the expropriation process this week is none other than 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, from its current owner, the company Papagayo Arena S.L., which is part of the "Sandos Hoteles&Resort" chain, which owns two other hotel establishments in the Riviera Maya.
The Papagayo Arena Hotel could be of public ownership within a year if negotiations with the owning company come to fruition, without having to resort to legal channels, which would prolong the resolution of the process. Once the owner of the land and the hotel is the Ministry of Environment, the execution of the demolition project would become effective in about six months.
Initiative of the Vice President of the Cabildo
The General Director of Coasts, José Fernández, landed in Lanzarote this Thursday and appeared before the media, just a few days after the procedures for the expropriation of the southern hotel were initiated from the institution he directs. 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 Las Coloradas cove and eliminate the profound impact that this macro hotel has had on 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.
Fernández is an expert in the urban reality of the Canary Islands and especially of Lanzarote, since he was previously the head of the Coastal Demarcation of the Canary Islands. His special sensitivity regarding the situation of the Canary coasts, as well as his knowledge of the island of Lanzarote and the conditions in which Las Coloradas beach is found, populated by the cement of the Papagayo Arena, have been key for the Ministry to make the decision to expropriate in order to demolish.
It is one of the actions that the State, through the Ministry of Environment, is carrying out on the Spanish coasts, where it currently manages the purchase of more than fifty properties on the coastline of the entire national territory, whose lands can be described as "of great ecological value" and that have been urbanized in an uncontrolled manner in recent years. For this, the Public Administration allocates an annual budget of 20 million euros.
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 Las Coloradas cove, and spend a few days in its four-star facilities, without knowing that they are in a hotel establishment built with a building permit 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 not aware 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 in August of last year 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 deregistered in the Registry of Tourist Operators of the Canary Islands and is open to the public in a "clandestine" manner 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 twelve floors
The Papagayo Arena Hotel is located between the fishing village of Playa Blanca and the Natural Monument of Los Ajaches. Its construction began in 2001 and it was opened to the public three years later. It constitutes one of the most controversial and debated tourist buildings built in Lanzarote in recent years, which was opposed by social groups and the Island Council itself, which a year before the start of the hotel's construction, went to the TSJC to challenge the building permit granted by the mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes.
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, 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 used 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 last April 7, in which he assured that César Manrique "wanted to build 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 ruling were favorable to the Cabildo of Lanzarote, it could be an important boost for the procedure that the Ministry of 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.
