The City Council of Xàtiva has started the procedures to sue the Church and recover the 8,000 square meters of public land around the hermitage of Sant Josep and the famous viewpoint of Bellveret. As sources from the Consistory have confirmed to elDiario.es, the intention is to reach a “friendly” agreement with the local Church and the Archbishopric “within the framework of the good relations that we maintain”, although the protocol has been activated to begin drafting the request. to rescue the land, which also occupies the public highway. It is considered that the actions of the abbot of Xàtiva in 2004, Arturo Climent Bonafé, were not in accordance with the law and that the land belonged to the city and not to the congregation.
As elDiario.es revealed exclusively, in 2004, the former abbot of A law of the government of José María Aznar validated this prerogative in democracy. Thanks to this usurpation of land ownership, the church had an easier time marketing a premises adjoining the hermitage of Sant Josep, now converted into a large restaurant. Part of its terrace now occupies land that should be public, but is rented by the Seu de Xàtiva. An important source of income for the local church.
In the event that there is no initial agreement between the Church and the City Council, the process must continue with an initial claim of ownership by the City Council. The municipality must demonstrate that it owns the land with a thoughtful argument. In this sense, and as elDiario.es has learned, since the 80s of the last century, Xàtiva’s budgets have financed the development of the area. From bottles to other actions to clean the rustic soil. It is worth remembering that the hermitage of Sant Josep is located in one of the most emblematic areas of the city, next to the Bellveret viewpoint, which is why it has become one of the most visited places by visitors and neighbors.
The church’s ownership of these 8,000 square meters was completely unknown to the municipality. In fact, the name change was carried out in 2004 in secret. The abbot allegedly went to the registry and put the property in the name of the church. The registry did not object, alleging the archbishopric’s power to make these registrations thanks to Aznar’s law. Xàtiva is not the only municipality that is confronting the Church over the ownership of property and land that all citizens should enjoy and in which the administration has invested hundreds of millions of euros.
The Church acknowledged in 2022 that it had registered almost a thousand properties that did not belong to it. With the arrival of Pedro Sánchez in La Moncloa, the government made public the list of real estate that the Episcopal Conference had registered thanks to the law of José María Aznar that allowed it to do so with only ecclesiastical certification. After the publication of the 34,961 properties (20,014 for worship and 14,947 for different uses), a negotiation was initiated between the two institutions to analyze the list and, after several months of conversations, the Church assumed that 965 of these properties did not correspond to it, according to data from the Executive.
The agreement by which the Episcopal Conference recognizes that it is not the legitimate owner of the real estate that it put in its name between 1998 and 2015 was sealed at the highest level in a meeting held by Pedro Sánchez and the president of the bishops, Juan José Omella.
The case of the 8,000 meters of land around the hermitage of Sant Josep does not enter into this great agreement. In fact, it was unknown to the institutions until a few months ago. It is evident that the former abbot of Xàtiva also used the Aznar law and the Franco privilege to register certain assets of the city in the name of the church. The trial may be the beginning of a series of tribunals or quickly end the amicable agreement of the Church.
