The Supreme Court has concluded that the work license for Azata del Sol in the area of El Algarrobico, in Carboneras (Almería) “still fully legal 20 years later” and should be reviewed. Therefore, it is necessary to revoke the building permit before ex officio before ordering its demolition. The court already advanced the sentence where it rejected the immediate demolition and the withdrawal of the building permit for the hotel last December.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the municipal works permit granted in 2003 is still in force and continues to be “adjusted” to this “planning”despite the environmental regulations that govern the Cabo de Gata-Níjar natural park and the Coastal Law.
However, consider that there is an “inadmissible leniency of all the administrations involved” in allusion to the City of Carboneras, the Junta de Andalucía and the State and that this “has led to an action devoid of all reason and all logic” regarding the construction of the hotel. However, he warns that the solution “cannot distort legal institutions.”
The Supreme Court points out that the solution, despite this “leniency” that it attributes to the actions of the three administrations, goes through the “replacement” of the land to its “original state”, which “should have remained unchanged”although he warns that this solution “cannot be channeled” by ordering the demolition without taking into account “the rights, certainly complex and of undoubted economic, social and legal interest, of all the parties involved”.
The court thus rejects Greenpeace’s request to demolish the complex and revoke his work permit because the “complexity” of declaring that invalidity also derives from the fact that, although “it continues to be fully legal”, there are two final judgments that declare “that the work has been carried out in the area of limitations of the maritime-terrestrial public domain, excluded from the condition of developable land”.
The Supreme Court adds that, for “greater complexity”, those lands They are included in the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park for their high ecological value and highlights that, “despite these very special interests worthy of protection by excluding the development of the land”, the planning “continues, at least formally, considering the land as developable, which was what led to the granting of the license” .
“It does not seem that such legal complications, and even subjective ones due to the plurality of administrations involved (City Hall, Board and State) can be resolved without carrying out the procedures of the legally established procedure, that is, the ex officio review“, transferred to endorse the decision of the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA) that so ordered the coal consistory.
The ruling states that the court “is aware” of the “extremely special situation” that it continues to maintain with its decision “on lands whose adequate protection is imposed” by the environmental regulations that govern the natural park and by the Coastal Law, but alleges that “procedural guarantees cannot yield to an alleged effectiveness of a demolition for which the Greenpeace association vehemently calls.
