The highest law court in the land has declared the building licence for Hotel Playa Cotobro in Almuñécar null and void.
It’s a belated decision but a devastating one, nevertheless, as the hotel has been operating since 2009.
Locals fought tooth and nail against the construction of a hotel there, and one Swedish resident – himself a housing magnate in his own country – dedicated a lot of time and money to fighting the project. He finally gave up and sold his Cotobro house in disgust, after his view had been obliterated by the new building.
No matter that the hotel plot was also the known site of a Roman well; i.e., a historic monument, the Town Hall and the construction company behind the hotel pushed it through against all opposition. Amongst the opposition was the Seaside Gazette, which dedicated several articles to criticising the project.
The affair reached the Regional Supreme Court (TSJA) in 2010; a year after the hotel was completed and its finding was that the modification to the municipal General Urban Development Plan (Modificación Puntual 71) was illegal. This ‘tinkering’ with the PGOU effectively allowed a hotel to occupy 4,500 sq/m of hitherto residential area land, which is approximately 20 times greater than regulations permit.
Urban Development Regulations stipulate that an increase in population produced by urban development must be accompanied by green belt/common use areas, which was certainly not the case here. The Town Hall argued that the increase in population was ‘seasonal’ corresponding mainly to ‘summer,’ and therefore was not affected by the public-space issue. The Regional Supreme court did not see it that way, so the Town Hall and the hotel appealed before the Supreme Court in Madrid.
Now finally, four years after the hotel opened its door to guests, the Supreme Court has delivered its verdict, upholding the Regional Supreme Court’s verdict – there can be no further appeal made.
The question is, what is to be done about it? It is highly unlikely that the hotel will be torn down. Furthermore, this is not the first time that a hotel in Almuñécar has been declared illegal – this was also the case in Taramay (Hotel Bahía) where a neighbour took the hotel and the Town Hall to court and won. The offending parts of the hotel, where it exceeded its building limitations, awaits demolition or… a financial agreement between the neighbour and the hotel.
But this all boils down to the majority of Almuñécar’s political parties getting their heads together and turning all sorts of unlikely places in building plots for future hotels. Hotel Bahía II on Avenida Don Juan Carlos I is also fruit of this ‘arrangement,’ where a 7-storey hotel, in an area that only permits a maximum of five floors, was crammed into a plot that was originally used as a materials yard for the Town Hall.
Who’s to blame? the PSOE, the PP and the PA under Benavides, principally.
(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)