The Lanzarote Island Council has initiated the procedure to declare the Hotel Oriental in Arrecife, located on the capital's Calle Real, as an Asset of Cultural Interest. This Tuesday, March 22, it has been published in the Official Gazette of the Canary Islands.
This measure thus suspends the license that the Arrecife City Council approved last September 22, and that implied a partial demolition of the interior of the building. An approval that meant a division of the then Government group. However, the Island Council requested precautionary measures and paralyzed the license the day after its concession.
According to the BOC, the intervention criteria on the facades of the main two-story building, facing León y Castillo, Hermanos Zerolo and Hierro streets, will be limited to those of “Research, Valorization, Maintenance, Conservation, Consolidation, Restoration and Reconstruction in accordance with the definition given in Law 11/2019, of April 25, on Cultural Heritage of the Canary Islands”.
With respect to the interior, "the interventions to be carried out on the second floor may be for Research, Valorization, Maintenance, Conservation, Consolidation, Restoration, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction, while on the first floor, taking into account that its interior has been altered, restructuring will also be considered, all in accordance with the definition given in Law 11/2019, of April 25, on Cultural Heritage of the Canary Islands".
And as for the rear of the plot, where the secondary outbuildings of a single height are located, "interventions of Research, Valorization, Maintenance, Conservation, Consolidation, Restoration, Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and replacement and extension up to a maximum of two heights will be allowed, set back one bay from Hierro street".
In addition, regarding the possible uses to be developed in the property, the Bulletin indicates that “all those activities that are compatible with the correct conservation and maintenance of the building and that do not put at risk the heritage values it carries” will proceed.
The protection environment is made up of the sections of the streets to which its facades face, "which face León y Castillo, Hierro, Hermanos Zerolo and Colegio streets, and surrounds both number 33 and 35 of León y Castillo street".
The Cabildo highlights that the Hotel Oriental is “not only one of the best exponents of urban bourgeois architecture, but also a building with a high historical value”. The property, founded by Claudio Toledo Cabrera at the beginning of the 20th century, was “the first and only hotel of a certain rank that existed on the Island”.
