In addition to changing the category of the land where Stratvs is located, which was built without permits and outside the law, the Special Plan of La Geria also gives a "position of advantage" to this winery by giving it a "public use". That is another conclusion of the former director of the Island Plan Office, Leopoldo Díaz, in the report that was revealed this Wednesday by La Voz de Lanzarote. The opinion, which was presented last April and had not been made public until now, triggered his dismissal last Friday by the president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés.
In that report, the then head of the PIOT Office pointed out that in the Justification Report of the La Geria Plan it was established that the wineries would be considered as "structuring equipment", "as part of the public use and given the relevance of the industrial activity of wine production for the conservation of the agricultural landscape". However, it was also added that in "a first phase" only two buildings would be included "as the core of the organization of public use", "those closest to this axis".
Specifically, as Polo Díaz pointed out in his report, the Casa Testeyna and the Casa del Barranco del Obispo, that is, the current Stratvs winery, were expressly mentioned in that Report. "Its function within this model must be established from the Public Use Plan", is established in the document.
However, of those two buildings, the former director of the PIOT stressed that one of them, the Casa Testeyna, does not even exist today as a winery. In this way, "it is the Casa del Barranco del Obispo (Stratvs winery) that seems to come out in a position of advantage in this first phase", Leopoldo Díaz highlighted in his report.
Stratvs, "core of the organization of public use"
In addition, the former director of the PIOT Office warned that placing the Stratvs winery as the "core of the organization of public use" is contradictory to the zoning attributed to this land by the Special Plan of La Geria itself, which classifies it as a "traditional use zone". And he pointed out that an activity of this type "would only be compatible with the General Use Zone", which is the one that admits "a greater influx of visitors" and "can serve for the location of activities and facilities" that "benefit" the community.
In the planning of La Geria, only the Monument to the Peasant is recognized with that category, which is part of the network of Tourist Centers of the Cabildo, but in practice it is intended to give the same consideration to the illegal Stratvs winery.
In the report that the Cabildo's lawyer Joana Macías made at the request of the Stratvs case Court, and that Pedro San Ginés intended to counteract with the opinion he requested from Leopoldo Díaz, the technician already warned of this same thing. According to her, Stratvs "is the only structuring equipment included, for the moment, in the public use model, and as such, the only destination for the location of the Landscape Protected Area of La Geria" that this Plan foresees. She even pointed out that "for the provision of this management office" that could be implemented in Stratvs, becoming the nerve center of the wineries of La Geria, "a rental expense of 10,800 euros per year has been budgeted".
Illegal works on a farm that Rosa does not even own
Regarding the legal situation of Stratvs, as already highlighted by the criminal case investigating its construction and commissioning, in which there are 17 people accused, the report by Leopoldo Díaz recalls that a permit was requested to build a warehouse-winery of 900 square meters built and what was done was to build one of 3,560 meters, affecting 12,000 meters of surface with all the facilities.
Similarly, he emphasizes that the old single-family house with ethnographic values for which its restoration was requested (the Casa del Barranco del Obispo) was demolished and in its place a new construction of greater size was built. In addition, he adds that the promoter, Juan Francisco Rosa, does not even accredit "the ownership of the farm where the winery is located, nor where most of the constructions" that complete this macrocomplex are.
And this "illegal execution of new constructions, in fraudulent substitution of the restoration granted", occurred on land that the Island Plan categorizes as "rustic protection of natural value-unique landscapes, "whose regulation prohibits actions such as this", Leopoldo Díaz emphasized.
Now, the new Special Plan of La Geria (incurring in a "vice of radical nullity", according to the jurist), changes the category of that land for another that does allow the installation of wineries. In addition, it was done without "justifying" that change and without submitting it to public display.
Stratvs would need a plot of 3.5 million square meters
Despite all this, however, Díaz points out in his report that Stratvs would still not be legalizable, since the work does not conform to the urban planning parameters of the Special Plan of La Geria either. Among other things, it fails to comply with the minimum plot that it should have for a construction of these dimensions, as well as the buildability, the meters built above ground, the maximum height and the setbacks.
At this point, the former director of the PIOT cited the expert report carried out by another technician of the Cabildo, Gustavo Navarro, also at the request of the judge of the Stratvs case. In that report, Navarro warned, among other things, that in order for Stratvs to comply with the maximum permitted buildability, it would be necessary for said works to be on a plot of 3.5 million square meters, that is, more than 350 hectares, when the entire protected landscape of La Geria occupies 5,255 hectares.
"In order to legally accommodate the entire constructed area in Stratvs, a plot of about 351 hectares is necessary, an amount that represents 6.69 percent of the Protected Landscape of La Geria", this technician insisted.
