The San Bartolomé City Council has ordered the sealing and suspension of activity in one of the Lanzagrava quarries, specifically the one located south of Güime, within the file that the City Council opened against the company. Among other things, that file concludes that Lanzagrava occupies land that is municipal property and that it carries out this activity "without authorization and prior qualification and municipal urban license", in "rustic land for the protection of the ecological natural value El Jable and urban park".
Almost a year ago, in November 2014, the City Council decided to send that file to the Industry Department of the Government of the Canary Islands, as well as to the Lanzarote Council and the Agency for the Protection of the Urban and Natural Environment (Apmun), which are the ones who have the powers to apply sanctions in matters of environment and urban planning infractions, respectively.
However, according to the resolution signed last July by the secretary of the City Council, José Manuel Fiestas, and by the mayor of San Bartolomé, María Dolores Corujo, "to date, this local administration is not aware that the corresponding measures have been adopted by said public administrations, nor that the corresponding restoration or sanctioning procedures have been initiated". In that resolution, the City Council decides to act by ordering this precautionary measure in the face of the "inactivity" of the regional Executive and the Cabildo.
Protecting the planning and sanctioning, powers "of unavoidable exercise"
As explained in the resolution, the City Council initially chose to transfer the file to those administrations so that they would order the suspension of the activity, parallel to the initiation of a sanctioning file. However, "as the inactivity of the administrations with sanctioning powers continues", the resolution indicates that the City Council must comply with the land planning laws in force. Among other things, these laws establish that "the powers of protection of the planning and sanctioning of infractions against it, will be of unavoidable exercise".
The file against Lanzagrava was initiated due to the litigation over the ownership of the land, since the City Council maintains that for years the company was expanding its quarry and occupying land that belonged to the City Council. In fact, the possibility of charging a fee and even demanding a part of the profits obtained by Lanzagrava during these years was even raised.
However, at the same time it was also discovered that "an extractive activity was being carried out without authorization, or at least failing to comply with the conditions of said authorization, by notoriously exceeding the spatial scope for which the authorization was granted by the General Directorate of Industry on October 21, 1986". For this reason, the file concluded that the priority was to regularize the activity and even report it to the administrations competent in matters of sanctions.
San Ginés asked to "invalidate the file"
In the case of the Cabildo, there is no record that it has opened a sanctioning file, but what it did do was ask the City Council to archive its own. As stated in the mayor's resolution, in February 2014 the president, Pedro San Ginés, sent a letter to the City Council defending that "the Cabildo is the legitimate owner of the land where the Lanzagrava quarry is located" and that they had filed a contentious appeal.
In that letter, San Ginés also asked that the City Council invalidate "the file, as the City Council does not have any right over the exploitation of the land where the quarry is located".
According to the municipal reports available to the City Council, the company would also have occupied land belonging to the first island institution, in addition to those that they maintain belong to the City Council.
Partial and late response from the Government
Regarding the Government of the Canary Islands, in June 2013 the City Council requested a report from the General Directorate of Industry on the permits that Lanzagrava had. Months later, the City Council had to repeat its request due to not receiving a response and finally obtained a response in November of that year. And in that response, the Government did not respond to two of the questions raised by the City Council, alleging that this request for information "is not substantiated in any regulated administrative procedure".
Regarding the third question, relating to the advisability or not of maintaining the active exploitation, the Industry Directorate responded with phrases such as "the self-sufficiency of mineral raw materials is a priority objective at the level of the European Union, and it should be promoted within a sustainable environmental framework", or "the existence of a certain industry, whether extractive or of any other kind, in a municipality, is always a source of direct and indirect wealth for it".
Millionaire benefits for years
Within the file, reports have also been collected on the income that Lanzagrava would have obtained from the exploitation of a quarry that, according to the City Council, occupies public land. And according to the report prepared by the City Council technicians, the company could have obtained an industrial profit of between 1.3 and 3.6 million euros.
Based on these figures, the technicians estimated that the City Council could claim a fee from Lanzagrava of 67,983 euros per year, regardless of the possibility of demanding compensation for the income of all previous years. For its part, the company responded alleging that its annual industrial profit amounts to 20,535 euros, so they considered that figure excessive. However, they did show their willingness to "consider the payment of a fee for the lease of the quarry", as they already proposed in February 2014 in a letter addressed to the City Council. Of course, they added that this could not "be interpreted" as a "waiver of the rights that may derive from the judicial proceedings" opened for the ownership of the land.
When transferring the file to the Cabildo and the Government of the Canary Islands almost a year ago, the City Council proposed, among other things, in addition to the opening of possible sanctioning files against the company and the closure of the activity, that it be regularized if possible and that "the corresponding land lease contract be signed, proposing for this purpose the coordination between the different administrations".
In case of non-compliance, to the Prosecutor's Office
After sending the file in November 2014, last April the City Council reiterated the content of the agreement adopted by its Governing Board to the same administrations, without obtaining a response. For this reason, it decided to act by ordering the suspension and sealing of the activity. In addition, it agreed to transfer this resolution again to the Cabildo and the Apmun, which is the body "competent for the initiation, instruction and resolution of the corresponding procedure for the restoration of urban planning legality and, where appropriate, sanctioning".
In its resolution, the City Council also warns that in the event of non-compliance with the order to suspend the activity by the company, the City Council will impose "up to ten coercive fines" and will report to the Public Prosecutor's Office so that possible criminal responsibilities can be determined.
For the company, this is the second order to suspend its activity that it has faced in a short time. The previous one occurred last June and affects its quarry in Tías, in the area known as "Las Majadas" and "Corral Prieto". In this case, the City Council ordered the activity to be stopped in one of the three areas of the quarry, for being exploited on protected land "without the mandatory municipal license".