A woman who ran an accommodation business in Montefrío was evicted by the owners, so she decided to take as much as she could with her... including the toilets.
To remove items that she considered she had the right to take with her, it required a large van doing three runs.
This took place in 2016 in Monachil in the Poniente de Granada and developed into a bout of law suits of all kinds.
It came before the provincial courts in 2020 where the accused was sentenced to a 21-month sentence, which is automatically a suspended one as it is less than two years. Furthermore she had to pay almost 55,000 euros in compensation to the hotel owners.
However, it didn’t rest there and she took the case to the Supreme Court, which rejected her appeal, meaning that the original sentence stands.
She apparently spirited away a very large, Split-System, industrial aircon which had been mounted in the events-hall ceiling, large, cold-storage machinery, an industrial dishwasher and washing machine, etc. That was the big stuff but she decided that the hotel wouldn’t be needing the toilet bowls either, it seems.
The woman leased the hotel in 2012 and followed it with a big inauguration ceremony but things soon went down hill over the next three years because of deficiencies in the installations and red-tape problems with licences and permits. Lawsuits ensued.
Animosity moved up a notch when the hotel was closed down after an eviction notice was served as she owed two months rent. It was at this point that she started removing items; an operation lasting three days in March 2016. During this manoeuvre, somebody connected with the owners of the hotel witnessed what was going on and phoned the Guardia Civil to prevent the ransacking.
However, there was a second round of looting during which bathroom fittings were removed, amongst them the toilets.
Finally, the property owners, helped by a locksmith and the Guardia Civil, managed to enter the hotel and found the hotel sadly lacking in contents to the tune of 48,777 euros in value. Another 5,000 euros would need to be spent on reinstalling the missing fittings.
(News: Montefrío, Poniente, Granada, Andalucia)