More than 31,000 square meters of public land in Playa Blanca will return to the City Council. That is what the Yaiza Plenary has approved this Thursday, which has annulled the agreement that in 2004 granted a company the use of that land for 50 years free of charge. In total, three plots were occupied that should have been public green areas. In one of them stands the Kikoland, which is owned by the businessman Juan Francisco Rosa and is located next to the Princesa Yaiza hotel.
Last September, the City Council already approved the official review of that agreement. Now, three months later, the government group has brought the resolution proposal to an extraordinary Plenary session, which has been approved with the favorable vote of the government group and the Ganemos councilor and with the abstention of Coalición Canaria and San Borondón.
Among other things, the file contains a strong opinion from the Canary Islands Advisory Council, which supports the procedure carried out by the City Council. That report concludes that the agreement signed more than a decade ago with the company Getsu No Denwa, of which Juan Francisco Rosa was the administrator, was "null and void." On the one hand, because the agreement was signed with an "absolute omission of the procedure," since not even a report from the Secretariat or the Technical Office assessing the legality of the agreement was prepared. On the other hand, because rights were granted to the company "without meeting the essential requirements for it."
The agreement gave him the right to extend the transfer
Under that agreement, signed under the Mayoralty of José Francisco Reyes, Getsu No Denwa was granted the use of the three plots for 50 years and without paying any type of fee. Subsequently, that company was absorbed by the company Hotel Princesa Yaiza S.A., which is to whom the file is now addressed and who presented allegations that have been rejected by the City Council. Of the three plots that were transferred free of charge, one is occupied by the Kikoland and another by a minigolf course at the Playa Dorada hotel, while the third, located between the Princesa Yaiza and the Papagayo shopping center, has not yet been given any use.
Among the numerous reasons for the nullity of that agreement, the legal reports question that a clause was also included allowing the transfer to be extended beyond the 50 years initially planned. For this, the agreement indicates that a public tender would be called, although at the same time it established preferential treatment for the company managed by Rosa. Specifically, it stated that he would be granted the right of first refusal. In this way, even if there was a better offer, the company would have the right to match it and keep the concession.
According to the Consultative report, that clause "has no protection either in the regulations governing state-owned concessions or in the rules governing public contracting, which provide in both cases for the corresponding bidding and award to whoever has the best right after the corresponding procedure." And the same is true of the initial award approved in 2004 under this agreement. In this regard, the opinion supports the legal report that the City Council had already prepared, which states that allowing "a private company the private use of public green areas violates the legal system."
It forced the administration to take care of the staff
In addition, the agreement also established that "once the exploitation period and, where appropriate, the extensions have ended," the City Council would take care of the personnel that the company had hired to work in those facilities, "with their salaries, seniority and the remaining rights that they had recognized."
With this clause, the Advisory Council points out that "the regulations for access to public service" were also violated, since it implied a commitment to hire workers by the City Council.
"In short," the opinion concludes, "the text of the approved agreement is aimed at ensuring in favor of the commercial entity the private use of public green areas for its restricted use for an initial period of 50 years, with possible extensions, for its construction and economic exploitation, with the possibility even of selling or transferring the use of such areas to third parties, which the entity effectively carried out with one of the plots." And all this was authorized, during Reyes' mandate, without any type of report, either legal, fiscal or urban planning, since "there is no record of the slightest processing" of a procedure by the City Council.
An auction of plots that had already been transferred
In exchange, the supposed benefit for the City Council was that the company would withdraw the lawsuit it had filed in the courts, claiming alleged rights over that land. However, although it acquired the plots in an auction in 1998, the truth is that they had already been previously transferred to the City Council, when the development of that Partial Plan was approved, within the mandatory compensations that it should receive for roads and green areas.
"The only thing that the company could agree with the City Council was the documentary formalization of the mandatory transfers," the Advisory Council points out in this regard, which makes it clear that no other type of agreement or agreement was possible.
