Among the more than 10,000 urban licenses that the mayor of Yaiza has granted in this legislature are the permits he granted in November 2005 to his party colleague and candidate for mayor of Arrecife for the PNL, Pedro de Armas, which were not communicated by the Yaiza City Council to the Lanzarote Cabildo when the City Council reported the licenses granted in said partial plan in April 2006 (among which the licenses requested by Pedro de Armas did not appear).
After learning of the existence of the licenses that the mayor of Yaiza granted to Pedro de Armas in November 2005 to build 10 villas in the Playa Blanca Partial Plan (following the news reported by this same media outlet), the Cabildo required the mayor of Yaiza to send him a copy of said licenses in order to challenge them in court because they are in a partial plan that is considered invalid for building.
The truth is that to this day the Yaiza City Council has still not communicated to the Cabildo the licenses that José Francisco Reyes granted to his party colleague authorizing a project of 10 villas in the Playa Blanca Partial Plan, as confirmed to this newsroom by the Councilor for Territorial Policy of the Lanzarote Cabildo, Mario Pérez. In this regard, Pérez added that they will give the southern mayor a margin of three or four more days and that, if they do not receive a response, the Cabildo will file a contentious-administrative appeal.
Less than 60,000 euros per villa
Pedro de Armas budgeted the 10 homes for which José Francisco Reyes had granted him a license at 588,731 euros, about 98 million of the old pesetas. Doing the math and according to these figures, Pedro de Armas told the City Council that each villa would cost him about 58,000 euros, less than ten million of the old pesetas, a figure somewhat far from reality according to what we have been informed by the Official College of Quantity Surveyors and Technical Architects of Lanzarote.
"Nobody goes below 120,000 euros," says the secretary of the COAATL. From that figure on, "it will depend on the qualities with which they work" in terms of carpentry, flooring and other services. The price included in the contracting budget of the 10 villas, which has nothing to do with the market price of the homes, includes everything from when the work begins until "the buyer opens the door with their key and turns on the light," points out one of the heads of Urban Planning of Lanzarote, who considers it "impossible for a villa of more than 100 square meters to cost 58,000 euros, that is just half of what its real value would be".
Depending on the contracting budget presented by the developer, the City Council must charge in the form of fees, for the processing of the license, and a percentage in the form of taxes, the proportion of which is stipulated by each city council. For the granting of this license, the Yaiza City Council pocketed just over 31,000 euros, when, according to the valuations provided by the College of Quantity Surveyors and Technical Architects of Lanzarote and other sources consulted, that figure should have exceeded 60,000 euros. Thus, the developer, in this case Pedro de Armas, saved about five million of the old pesetas in taxes.
The truth is that, as the secretary of the COAATL explained to La Voz, it is common for developers to present somewhat lower contracting budgets, but "the city councils have realized this and some, revalue the work once it is finished" in order to check its real price. This is the case of the Arrecife City Council, among others.
