The Supreme Court has ruled out this Tuesday ordering the demolition of one of the best-known symbols of the brick fever that devoured an important part of the Spanish coast at the beginning of this century: the hotel built on the beach of El Algarrobico in the Almeria municipality of Carboneras.
The Third Chamber (for contentious-administrative matters) has dismissed the appeal filed by Greenpeace against the ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia, which in July 2021 concluded that this demolition cannot be carried out while the construction —which was never opened to the public— public— still have in force the building license that the City Council granted to the promoter almost 20 years ago, in 2003. That municipal permit should have already been reviewed by the consistory, but given its delay, The environmental organization Greenpeace had demanded that the demolition of this mass be ordered, which is doomed to disappear sooner or later without waiting for that process to be completed. Sources from the high court have confirmed that the court has dismissed the ecologists’ appeal, although the ruling will not be notified for a few days with the legal arguments that have led to that decision.
The construction of this hotel was paralyzed by a judge in Almería in February 2006, when the works were practically finished. In the last 16 years, its illegality has been proven after around fifty judicial pronouncements of all kinds: the construction invades 100 meters of the maritime-terrestrial public domain strip, it was built in an area of the Cabo de Gata natural park -Nijar where you can not build and the land on which it is owned by the Junta de Andalucía, which also exercised the right of withdrawal in 2006, after the controversy that arose. One of the problems in this case is that, in order to specify all these infractions, an endless number of individual cases have been opened in recent years that have ended up creating a complex judicial tangle of sentences and appeals.
This hotel accumulates up to 13 rulings only in the Supreme Court, which was promoted by the promoter Azata with the approval at the time of the Junta de Andalucia and the City Council of Carboneras. The only legal footing it has left is the building permit and the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA) urged the consistory to review it ex officio last year, given the indications that it could be invalid. But that court did not order the demolition, understanding that the municipal license granted 20 years ago must first be annulled. In other words, this is the procedure that would have to conclude with the file for the demolition of the building, but the City Council, governed by the PSOE, has not carried out this review despite the requirements of justice and environmental groups, which They have already asked the TSJA to sanction the mayor of Carboneras, Jose Luis Amerigo.
“The numerous court decisions have had no practical effect. The Carboneras City Council refuses to comply with them ”, lamented Greenpeace in the appeal presented to the Supreme Court. “The existence of this manifestly illegal building for almost 20 years causes social alarm” and “lack of confidence in the Administration of Justice”, pointed out the document presented by José Ignacio Dominguez, the lawyer who has been fighting against this construction for different environmental associations since the beginning of this case. “After four decades of illegality, the 13 sentences of this court have been useless,” added the appeal.
However, the Supreme Court now understands that the demolition cannot be ordered until the municipal license is annulled. The underlying legal debate was whether it is possible to consider a municipal license valid if it is based on urban regulations that have been annulled by the courts in recent years and that make construction illegal.
Following the ruling, Greenpeace has announced that it intends to appeal to the Constitutional Court and that it intends to continue putting pressure on the Carboneras City Council to annul the building permit. This environmental group will also continue to ask the TSJA to sanction the mayor. The TSJA already sent a request to the mayor a month and a half ago in which it orders him to report every 15 days on the steps he is taking to comply with another of his sentences, from 2018, which obliges the Consistory to modify its urban planning to leave Of course, the area where that mass of concrete was built could not be built. In this last letter, dated October 28 of this year.
The Carboneras City Council, for its part, affirmed this Tuesday that it maintains an attitude of “full collaboration to comply with everything dictated by the courts regarding the hotel and in all legal proceedings that affect it.” The Consistory alleges that last September it issued a decree that explained the modification of the municipal urban planning to “adapt its content to the sentences”, reports Javier Martin-Arroyo.
Takedown protocol
When things got really ugly for the El Algarrobico hotel with the different judicial pronouncements that demonstrated its illegality, the central and regional administrations agreed on a joint demolition plan. It was in 2011, but despite the rulings that kept coming, both governments assured that they could not execute that plan until the entire judicial horizon was cleared, something that environmentalists wanted the Supreme Court to do.
The agreed demolition protocol establishes that the central Administration would be responsible for the costs of the demolition and the Board of those for the restoration of the area, without prejudice to the actions that are later launched to claim that money from third parties, such as the City Council or the promoter. And how much does the demolition cost? A 2012 study prepared by Tragsatec, a subsidiary of the public company Tragsa, established that the total cost would be 7,175,000 euros (a decade later that figure should be updated).
After the demolition, 40,000 cubic meters of waste would have to be transferred to landfills, the equivalent of 16 Olympic swimming pools. In addition, a 65,800-square-meter piece of land must be restored, as indicated in that Tragsatec study, which continues to be the best guide to know how to make this brick symbol disappear, which has been stranded on the beach for more than 16 years. Carobic.
