The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has issued a judgment dated December 7, 2007, which annuls the decree of the mayor of Teguise, of May 19, 1999, which granted a building permit to the company "Armadores de Puerto Rico S.A.", authorizing a 600-bed hotel project on plot 210 of the Costa Teguise Partial Plan, next to the Hotel Oasis Lanzarote and the Royal Residence of La Mareta.
The highest Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has upheld the appeal filed by the legal services of the Cabildo against said license and declares it null and void, among other reasons, because it was granted without having requested from the Cabildo "the prior, mandatory and binding report from the PIOT Office", which constitutes an essential requirement for the granting of licenses in areas of land whose partial plans have not been adapted to the Island Plan, as is the case of Costa Teguise, reiterating once again its already consolidated jurisprudential doctrine that has established the criterion -defended by the Cabildo- that since the approval of the PIOT in 1991, urban planning licenses cannot be granted in partial plans not adapted to the Island Plan without a favorable report from the Cabildo, given the prevalence of island planning over municipal general and partial planning.
In addition, the High Court also points out as reasons for annulment that the license was granted by the then mayor of Teguise, Juan Pedro Hernández, in a totally arbitrary manner, with total and absolute omission of the procedure established in urban planning legislation, because no municipal legal report or even a technical report from the town hall itself was issued to support the project, which, in addition, has been negatively reported by the Island Plan office of the Cabildo.
The demolition of the works
The Chamber warns that "once the nullity of the building permit has been declared, this means that the project authorized by said license and the acts from which it originates are left without legal coverage, with the legal material consequences derived from said annulment, including the restoration of the altered or disturbed order, by means of demolition if necessary".
The sentence of the High Canary Court concludes that "it will be in execution of the sentence where, in full compliance with the ruling, the City Council of Teguise must adopt all the measures to restore the altered and transformed reality derived from the works covered by the annulled license and proceed, where appropriate, to demolition, whether the building materialized on the plot is covered by an execution project with coverage in the act of authorization of the basic project declared radically null here, or whether it is a building without coverage in any project".
The construction work on this hotel was started in 2003, but the appeal filed that same year by the Cabildo caused its paralysis when only a small part of the hotel structure had been executed (around 25% approximately), with the works being paralyzed since that date.
With this ruling, there are now 19 hotel complexes whose urban planning licenses have been annulled by the Courts of Justice in the appeals filed by the Cabildo of Lanzarote.
