Yet another hotel has been declared illegal by the Tribunal Supremo de Justicia de Andalucía; this time it is the Hotel Gran Cortijo, which is part of the El Cercado complex, at the top of Santa Cruz, (San Sebastian).
Basically, the TSJA considers the urban development decisions taken by the Town Hall that permitted a hotel to be built in the Río Seco vega were ‘contrary to legality.’ This TSJA finding came about almost simultaneously with the court sentence that annulled the bull-ring project.
The leader of the IU opposition party, Fermín Tejero – who was voted the most popular councillor in a recent poll – says that during recent years the shortest route and invariably illegal one, has been used to award building licences for ‘speculative development.’ “All of these projects are being annulled, one after the other,” he said.
In this case, the TSJA sentence annuls an agreement signed by the Town Hall on the 3rd of August 2000, declaring a geriatric hospital as of public utility, thus permitting the construction of a 4-story building on greenbelt land.
According to a press statement issued by the IU, the geriatric hospital rapidly changed its description to a 4-star hotel of El Cercado, only shortly after to be called Hotel Gran Cortijo de Andalucía by its developers and now sporting a 5-star epithet.
The IU insists on urging the Junta de Andalucía to remove from the Town Hall its urban-development authority, as is contemplated by the law in cases of serious abuses (as was the case of Marbella).
Finally, Fermín Tejero says that he understands that the Mayor is not the only guilty party: although he is the brain behind them, he can count on the complicity of other political parties, who react with hypercritical indignation when the legal system acts.