The Criminal Court 1 of Almeria acquitted the 28 people who were accused, according to the hotel owner, of causing damage to the facade of El Algarrobico as part of a Greenpeace action, with a huge graffiti “Illegal hotel” which took place in May 2014 in the municipality of Carboneras.
“We celebrate that all the people have been acquitted. This new conviction confirms that El Algarrobico should have gone down in history “A long time ago, those responsible should have paid for the damage and restored the ecosystem,” said Eva Saldaña, director of Greenpeace Spain, in a statement following the court ruling.
According to Saldaña, exercising the right to protest against “attacks on the territory” is an essential tool to bring about change and we will continue to do so: “They are not going to silence us.” The accusation brought by the hotel’s ownership requested a 24-month fineat the rate of six euros per day, for a total of 1,080 euros for each of the accused, and a prison sentence of one year for each for an alleged offence of disobedience. He is also seeking 186,703 euros in civil liability for the damage caused to the hotel.
The prosecution understood, like the defense, that no crime had been committed since it was not possible to identify the people that they had painted the facade of the hotel, that the accused had been identified on the beach, but not inside it and, finally, that no responsibility could be attributed to the accused.
The sentence in which the presumption of innocence prevailsclaims that there is no evidence that any of the accused entered by force and broke the padlock on the door of the interior of the El Algarrobico hotel or that they painted its facade black, Greenpeace reported.
He also points out that it has not been proven that the accused did not comply with the order of the Civil Guard officers who arrived at the scene, in uniform, to leave the property. While waiting to see if the company that owns it, Azataappeals the sentence, according to Greenpeace, another chapter is closed in this organization’s fight for the demolition of the illegal El Algarrobico hotel.
According to environmentalists, this new sentence adds to the more than 40 resolutions in agreement with Greenpeace and that they declared that the construction of the hotel was “illegal”. The hotel built by Azata del Sol in the area of El Algarrobico, in the Cabo de Gata Natural Park, was the protagonist of an ecological fight to achieve its demolition, a step which has still not been dated.
