The mayor of Teguise, José Dimas Martín, issued a resolution on October 29, 2008, declaring the "absolute nullity" of the construction license granted by that same City Council in 1999 for the construction of a workshop residence in the Casa de las Cúpulas, owned by the César Manrique Foundation (FCM).
The mayor's resolution cites the background of this process. The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands annulled the license granted by the City Council (governed by the PIL) following a complaint by Manuel Nicolás González, advisor to that same party in the Cabildo and a prominent member since its foundation.
The 2007 ruling also annulled the permit from the General Directorate of Urban Planning of the Government of the Canary Islands. The FCM decided not to appeal the ruling and stated that in this way it avoided the imposition of damages to the public institutions concerned.
Subsequently, the FCM offered the ownership of the Casa Taller to the Cabildo of Lanzarote, opting for what they considered the "most beneficial formula for the general interest of the island and its citizens", since the Cabildo could thus increase its assets and could develop environmental and cultural initiatives.
The facilities of the Casa de las Cúpulas comprise an old house of about 300 square meters, a workshop-pedagogical space of another four hundred meters, a plot of 4,000 square meters and the technical project for the rehabilitation of the complex.
PIL REJECTION
The PIL, for its part, rejected the offer and described it as an affront and a provocative deception", a shameful, petty bourgeois and irregularity-prone mockery, in order to safeguard an obvious, evident and manifest illegality". The FCM's offer was made on November 4, 2008, when the City Council had already resolved the absolute nullity although it did not communicate it to the interested parties until two weeks later.
The Foundation, for its part, considered that the litigation was an operation concocted to delegitimize the work of the institution and its defense of the containment of the territory in the courts. The FCM has achieved the annulment of 27 licenses for as many hotels, granted by the municipalities of Yaiza and Teguise. The Cabildo of Lanzarote (governed by the PSOE and the PIL, like Teguise) however expressed its satisfaction with the offer of the Casa de las Cúpulas.
THE HOTELS
In Teguise there are seven licenses for hotels and tourist complexes annulled by the courts for failing to comply with urban planning regulations and for lacking technical and legal reports or for having an appearance of a report to obtain the license. The mayor of Teguise, José Dimas Martín, has insisted on several occasions that these are "formal defects" and has been in favor of regularizing their situation as soon as possible.
ACN Press