Alex Trelinski
BENIDORM City Council will have to find €330 million- over double its annual budget- after losing a Supreme Court appeal over a land compensation award.
The case revolved around the loss of building rights in the protected Serra Gelada Natural Park.
The huge award was made by the Valencian Supreme Court last May to developers Murcia Puchades Expansion SL and Urban Urban Villajoyosa 2000 SL.
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The council then appealed to the national Supreme Court and lost- meaning it has to find €283 million plus interest.
The court also charged legal costs of €2,000 and their ruling cannot be challenged.
Land in the APR-7 sector of the Serra Gelada had been classified as urban land suitable for development back in the 1960’s.
The Murcia Puchades family had three plots totalling over two million square meters.
Their legal action started after Benidorm City Council voided urban planning agreements first signed in 2003 between then-mayor, Vicente Perez Devesa and several companies.
The agreements were renewed twice in 2010 and 2013 by ex-mayor Agustin Navarro and left open an option to pay compensation to keep constructors out of ‘protected’ areas.
There has been no comment so far from Benidorm mayor, Toni Perez, or the rest of his Partido Popular administration.
The spokesperson for the opposition PSOE socialists, Cristina Escoda, told the Informacion newspaper that they will wait to see what the council’s legal department has to say.
Escoda stated that the fact that Perez did not renew the agreements has ‘had dramatic and painful consequences for the council’.
She added that €330 million ‘represents two-and-a-half budgets’ and that the mayor should apologise for his ‘irresponsibility’.
Before launching a Supreme Court challenge last summer, Perez described the Valencian court ruling as ‘nonsense’.
Domingo Monforte, a lawyer acting for the Murcia Puchades family, told SER Radio in Benidorm that they are willing to discuss a deal.
“If the City Council picks up the phone and proposes a meeting to negotiate we would be there the next day,” he said.
