Tom Powell
FRESH controversy has erupted over the future of the Cabo de Gata’s Algarrobico Hotel, with the Andalucia High Court (TSJA) now ruling that the building licence is legal.
However, the half-built 411-room, 20-storey-hotel occupying a protected beach in the renowned natural park has not been declared legal, only the licence.
Legal wrangling over the hotel has rumbled on for nearly a decade in what the Junta’s Environmental Minister has described as a ‘judicial tangle’.
In May, the TSJA ruled that the land on which the unsightly hotel was built belongs to the Junta, just weeks after deciding it belonged to the local municipality of Carboneras.
The shock u-turn was prompted when six European environmental agencies – including Greenpeace and Ecologistas en Accion – condemned the previous ruling.
Also in May, nearly 100 Greenpeace activists daubed an 8,000 square metre black circle on the front of the building with ‘ilegal hotel’ spelled out in white letters. The non-governmental organisation claims the hotel is a ‘black spot’ on the otherwise beautiful coastline.
However many people living nearby who are in favour of the hotel have voiced their views with graffiti of their own. Residents doctored the Greenpeace message so it now reads ‘legal hotel’. They also added: ‘Hotel, yes! 100% legal. Work, yes – unemployment, no!’
The Law is the Law
….unless you are in Spain lol.
I’m starting to think that O.P. is running a kind of Comment Bot in the shape of Rob. Sort of a Rob Bot.
How can you really be bothered coming on here Fred all the time berating Spain.
What a sad example of a bitter ex pat you are.
The law is never really the law, just how it’s interpreted, and who it applies to. It’s about expediency and corruption and favours.
We have 10,000 ‘aforados’ in Spain – the most of any country in the world (The Constitution, Article 14, says we are all equal in the eyes of the law). In France there are 21, in Germany or the UK – there is no such thing.
An ‘aforado’ is a person with parliamentary immunity who can only be tried by the Supreme Court (like, for example, the past presidents of the Junta de Andalucía…).
But then, are the courts honest?