The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) has annulled the extension to a license granted by the Teguise City Council in 1998, which authorized the construction of a tourist complex of 422 apartments and 974 places in plot 242B of the Costa Teguise Partial Plan.
The Cabildo argued in its appeal that old licenses cannot be reactivated, -in this case it was granted in 1989-, ignoring in the execution of the work all the new territorial planning approved in the lapse of time between the granting of the permit and its extension.
The license was requested during the processing of the PIOT of 1991 but the promoter showed no interest in its execution until 1998, coinciding with the revision of the aforementioned planning. It was then when the mayor of Teguise, Juan Pedro Hernández, granted the extension that allowed the beginning of works that do not comply with the requirements of current territorial legality.
The arguments of the Cabildo, more forceful
The main peculiarity of this judicial decision is that the same municipal action was appealed by the Ministry of Tourism of the Government of the Canary Islands in 1999, being dismissed by the Court in May 2004, which confirmed the validity of the extension.
However, in this new ruling, the TSJC appreciates that the arguments put forward by the Cabildo are more solid than those presented by the regional Executive. The Chamber also warns that in the previous case only a part of the problem was analyzed.
On the other hand, the ruling confirms the success of the decision of the Councilor for Territorial Policy of the Cabildo in January 2006, Carlos Espino, who, for the first time in the Canary Islands, materialized the right to subrogate the municipal powers as representative of the Corporation (art. 169 of the Law on Territorial Planning of the Canary Islands) by declaring the expiration of the extension and ordering the sealing of the works.
Such a quick reaction allowed that today only 20% of the structure has been executed and there are not in operation nearly 1000 tourist places with their license annulled.
A new judicial victory
On the other hand, the Cabildo has also been informed of a second ruling favorable to its thesis in defense of the territory, which invalidates all the licenses granted by the City Council of Yaiza to the Gran Castillo hotel, which occupies plots 3 and 4 of the Las Coloradas Partial Plan (Playa Blanca).
The judicial decision annuls the license of June 1, 1998 to the basic project, the execution license of 2001 and the extension of 2003. And again there is the peculiarity that there is a previous ruling of the TSJC itself to an appeal filed by the César Manrique Foundation, which although invalidated the administrative acts of 1998 and 2003, did not rule with respect to that granted in 2001.
This served the City Council of Yaiza to defend that the Court left standing the execution license, so the hotel was still legal, an argument that is invalidated by the new response from the Chamber.
The Gran Castillo hotel, which is currently in operation, is located next to the controversial Papagayo Arena, occupying between both establishments the entire coastline of Las Coloradas beach.
