The Constitutional Court has signed the death sentence of a hotel built decades ago in the dunes of Corralejo, on the Canary Island of Fuerteventura. The plenary session rejected the allegations that the Canary Islands government had presented against the decision of the Ministry of Ecological Transition not to renew the concession granted more than 20 years ago and that allows the Oliva Beach hotel and apartments, of the Riu hotel chain, to continue in that location. The Canary Islands executive of Fernando Clavijo has taken the case to the Court of Guarantees, which considers that this decision is the responsibility of the central executive.
The plenary assembly, with a presentation by CĂ©sar Tolosa and unanimously, decided to reject these allegations, according to judicial sources informed to elDiario.es. There is no doubt, these sources explain, that this is a responsibility of the State and not of the regional executive.
The dunes of Corralejo, in the north of the island of Fuerteventura, were declared a natural park in 1982. The Oliva Beach hotel of the Riu chain had been built on the sand for more than five years and the path to a fait accompli was for the executive of JosĂ© MarĂa Aznar to grant a concession to the company in 2003. Three decades of authorization from 1992, when the authorities wrote that the hotel was invading public property.
The license granted to the Geafond company was amended and extended over the years until in 2020 the authorities confirmed that the hotel and apartments had developed well beyond the agreed conditions. A road, gardens, untreated water tanks and a fence that prevented access to the plot. It was in February of this year that the Secretary of State for the Environment signed the expiration of the concession and informed the concessionaire of its obligation to demolish the hotel for non-compliance with coastal regulations.
The Canarian executive of Clavijo has addressed the Constitutional Court without questioning the substance but raising what is called a positive conflict of jurisdiction: it understands that the jurisdiction over the coasts is in the hands of the government of the islands and not of the central executive. The government of the islands has even spoken of a “direct interference” in the powers of the autonomous community.
The decision of the Plenary Constitutional Court was to reject these allegations and declare that it is the power of the central government to make this type of decision, formally approving an order whose purpose is the demolition of the Oliva Beach Hotel and the apartments in the dunes of Corralejo. As has happened in the case of other hotels, the demolition process can last for years with new trials in court, as is currently the case of the Villar de Cañas complex in Extremadura or El Algarrobico in Andalusia. A procedure that, as the Prosecutor’s Office itself denounces, is difficult to carry out and usually drags on in court.
