The Almería Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation to clarify whether seven councilors of the Carboneras City Council (Almería, 8,458 inhabitants) committed a crime of prevarication by delaying the vote on the annulment of the license for the Algarrobico hotel. It was scheduled for last June 17 in a municipal plenary session, but then five PSOE councilors and two non-affiliated decided to postpone the decision. This angered environmental organizations such as Greenpeace or Salvemos Mojácar, and the latter reported it to the public prosecutor because it considered it an “unacceptable disobedience” and “an act of manifest prevarication.” The license that allowed the construction of the building, a symbol of wild speculation on the coast, was finally annulled on July 7 after an ultimatum from the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA).
That mid-June day was very significant because, more than two decades later, it was expected that the permit granted by the Almería city council to build the hotel in 2003, when it was in socialist hands, would be canceled. The surprise came when five PSOE councilors, a former PP councilor, and another non-affiliated decided to delay the vote by five days. They did so because, they argued, new reports were needed to determine what compensation would correspond to the company promoting the construction if the license was annulled, despite the fact that Greenpeace and Salvemos Mojácar have explained that the National Court has ruled on several occasions that the company has no right to it, as has also been confirmed by the Supreme Court. “What they did was a trick to avoid processing anything and delay everything again because the city council does not want to demolish,” says José Ignacio Domínguez, lawyer for Salvemos Mojácar.
The movement of the PSOE councilors did not please the party leadership and, that same day, the secretary general of the Almería socialists, José María Martín, announced the opening of disciplinary proceedings and communicated the temporary expulsion of all of them. Nor did it please the environmental organizations that have been fighting for more than 20 years against the monstrosity that still stands on the beach even though its land has been declared non-developable. Salvemos Mojácar then reported what happened to the prosecutor’s office and focused on the seven councilors: José Luis Amérigo, Ángeles Carrillo, Felipe Cayuela, Francisco Capel, Vanesa Fuentes, Mariana Esteban, and Isabel Hernández. Now, in response, the public body has decided to open investigation proceedings to assess whether the public representatives committed a crime of administrative prevarication. “It is the usual response: a complaint is filed and studied,” say sources from the prosecutor’s office, where they point out that the city council has been requested to provide the minutes of the plenary session held in June and to explain the reason why it was suspended. Information that has already been sent by the municipality.
The move also did not please Greenpeace, which filed an appeal before the TSJA — to which the Andalusian Government and the Ministry of Ecological Transition (Miteco) also joined — asking the court to force the city council to annul the license or to execute the measure. In its response, a few days later, the TSJA ordered the city council to issue a resolution to annul the building license. It granted a period of 20 days for this, and if they did not do so, warned that the court itself could nullify it. It was not necessary, because in another extraordinary plenary session held on July 7, that annulment was finally approved thanks to the votes of the mayor, Salvador Hernández (Citizens), and the seven councilors who were present, since four others — the non-affiliated Felipe Cayuela; two from the PSOE; and the PP defector Ángeles Carrillo — left the room at the time of the vote. The socialists who did vote in favor were able to remain in the party ranks.
Salvemos Mojácar has welcomed the proceedings opened by the prosecutor’s office. For the entity, it is “a good sign that the Prosecutor’s Office sees a possible crime that needs to be investigated,” they say, according to Europa Press. The entity’s leaders hope that this action “sets a precedent” and ends with “unacceptable actions by said councilors being condemned.” The association maintains that similar actions have caused more than 20 years of delays in the demolition of the hotel, which will still not be effective “because the administrations do not want to do their job,” Domínguez complains. “The city council has the obligation to restore urban legality, which is to demolish, but the Andalusian Government could also do it,” he adds. “Unfortunately, there are likely to be more years of lawsuits,” he concludes, explaining that the company promoting the hotel can still appeal the annulment of the license.
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