The municipal spokesperson of Lanzarote En Pie (LeP) in the Arrecife City Council, Leticia Padilla, has warned that she will take the Arrecife government group to the Prosecutor's Office if it finally authorizes the partial demolition of the building that housed the old Hotel Oriental, at 37 León y Castillo Street. The license to "restructure" the building was about to be granted almost a year ago, but was finally left on the table at the Governing Board in November 2020, stating then that they were awaiting a new municipal legal report, after the Cabildo's Heritage Department had raised objections.
Finally, according to Padilla, the issue was taken up again last week, although it was again left on the table at the Governing Board until documentation was received from the court. "We know that this documentation is already in the possession of the Arrecife City Council, so, presumably, the government will have to resolve the matter next week," warns the councilor, who believes that the mayor, Ástrid Pérez, "will look for the loophole that allows her to approve the demolition by skirting the law."
The councilor recalls that the granting of the license will mean the demolition of the interior of the building, leaving the interior patio and the facade, which she says "will cause irreparable damage to the city's heritage, which will see one of its most important historical buildings lost." In this sense, the spokesperson for Lanzarote en Pie points out that the Court has ordered the City Council to resolve the file, "which does not necessarily imply the positive resolution of the building permit."
In this regard, she emphasizes that the Heritage Department of the Cabildo of Lanzarote issued a report requesting that "due to the high heritage values of the aforementioned building, measures be taken to guarantee its correct conservation in the face of the lack of maintenance it is currently suffering," pointing out that it was "unfavorable to demolition."
"The tip of an iceberg" due to the "abandonment of the City Council"
However, Padilla believes that the mayor "will rely on the abandonment of the Arrecife City Council, which has not updated the catalog of historical and cultural heritage since 2004," which "contravenes the Canary Islands Land Law." And it is that the Canary Islands Land Law, in its article 151.2, establishes that "the city councils have the obligation to approve and keep updated the protection catalog, which contains the precise identification of the assets or spaces that, due to their unique characteristics or in accordance with the regulations of the historical heritage of the Canary Islands, require a specific conservation regime, establishing the degree of protection that corresponds to them and the types of intervention allowed in each case." However, the Arrecife City Council has not proceeded to update the catalog since 2004, so, Padilla recalls, "by not doing its job in all these years, it has opened the possibility for circumstances such as the one affecting the old Hotel Oriental to occur."
Leticia Padilla recalls that Lanzarote En Pie has repeatedly requested the updating of the catalog of historical architectural heritage of Arrecife. The last one, on June 29, following the official presentation of the "Proyecto +P" of the Official College of Architects of Lanzarote, in which it was announced that, while municipalities such as Haría have carried out the heritage protection of 160 buildings, Arrecife has only approved the protection of 19 of the 150 proposed.
"What is beyond any doubt is the heritage importance of the aforementioned building, since Gesplan includes it in its inventory of assets to be protected, along with another 128 buildings, in the drafting of the draft Supplementary Plan of Arrecife of 2021; and it was also included in the list of buildings proposed in the update of the catalog in 2008 that was subsequently annulled by the courts," emphasizes the councilor. "This situation generated with the Hotel Oriental is an example and the tip of the iceberg of what is coming in Arrecife with a General Plan that does not include the catalog of historical heritage of the municipality," she warns.
