The Second Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has issued a resolution on June 7, 2007 in appeal 746/2001, declaring "concluded and ready for sentencing" the lawsuit filed by the company that owns "Hiperdino Valterra" against the Arrecife City Council's agreement in 2000 that denied it the building permit to build on the plots where the hypermarket and the adjacent one (former factory of the fishing company "Ojeda") are currently located, a large Shopping Center of 20,000 square meters and a total of 70 commercial premises.
After six years of a long judicial process, in which a multitude of expert, documentary, testimonial and other evidence has been practiced, the High Court has declared the lawsuit finalized after hearing the conclusions formulated by the defendant parties, which are the Arrecife City Council (which has made a defense limited to the simple ratification of what was agreed) and the Lanzarote Business Circle, which, according to La Voz, has been the party that has carried the full weight of the defense of the municipal action and has been the one that has most extensively refuted all the arguments presented by the appellant company and the one that also proposed the practice of all the evidence to corroborate the legality of the appealed municipal action.
In this process, the company that owns "Hiperdino Valterra" not only asks the Court to annul the Arrecife City Council's agreement that denied it the permit to build, but also asks the Chamber to condemn that Corporation to pay more than 36 million euros (6,000 million of the old pesetas) for the damages derived from the impossibility of building, the losses for not being able to rent the premises of the shopping center, the losses for sales of the expansion of the supermarket and other extremes.
Apart from this judicial process, the company that owns Hiperdino also filed another appeal against the denial of the opening license that is being followed before the Contentious-Administrative Court No. 1 of Las Palmas with number 202/2001 and that is also "ready for sentencing".
Background
In 1997, surrounded by strong controversy, the Arrecife City Council authorized the commissioning of a supermarket with 1,755 m2 of sales area in the Valterra industrial estate to the company "Teguise Alimentación S.L." under the brand "Spar".
Shortly after the supermarket was put into operation -which opened to the public in December 1997- the company that owned it sold it to "Pío Coronado S.A.", which obtained on November 26, 1999 from the Minister of Industry and Commerce of the Government of the Canary Islands a "specific commercial license" (authorization necessary for the installation and expansion of large commercial areas) that authorized the expansion of the sales area of the supermarket to 6,500 square meters.
In the months of January and February 2000, the company Pío Coronado S.A. requested a building and opening license for the construction of a large Shopping Center located on the plot occupied by the supermarket and the adjacent one, within which the new expanded supermarket and another 70 commercial premises would be located.
These licenses were denied by the City Council in September 2000, both for non-compliance with the requirements established in the Island Plan for the installation of large commercial areas and, fundamentally, for the incompatibility of the project with the determinations of the General Urban Planning Plan of Arrecife, as the regulatory ordinance of the Valterra industrial area does not allow the installation of a Shopping Center on said land.
These municipal acts were appealed by the company before the City Council itself, whose Plenary rejected them on May 8, 2001, then filing a lawsuit before the courts of justice in which they denounce the alleged illegality of the denial of the licenses and ask that they be allowed to build the shopping center (which would be the largest on the island) and be compensated for the delay suffered.