An order that ended in limbo. That is what happened with the decree of the former Urban Planning Councilor of the Murcia City Council, Andrés Guerrero, which LA VERDAD has been able to access and in which he ordered the Inspection of the Works and Activities Service of the Consistory to “return a visit” to the Teatre de Las Atalayas nightclub and, “in the event that it has not been carried out voluntarily, it will proceed to forced execution through the establishment’s seal.” This was stated in the document that the then head of the department sent to this municipal area on October 11, 2022 and that ended up being unfulfilled.
And it was in view of the content of the report of the inspector who was in charge of undertaking said verification. This record, issued on October 21, includes that, “in response to the order to cease the activity and the warning of forced execution – without therefore making reference to the necessary seal -, once contacted with the owner – of the aforementioned premises – , declare and provide justification for the presentation of the technical documentation that was missing for the legalization process.
From there, no one in the municipal Corporation is able to offer an official explanation, for the moment, about what subsequently happened with said record and why the aforementioned seal was not consummated. This should have been sent, according to Guerrero, to the Administrative Service to continue with the process, but the former head of Urban Planning himself was not able to confirm yesterday whether this occurred, defending that he was not even informed of its existence.
“That is what is being investigated,” reiterated the head of Urban Planning during the government of José Antonio Serrano, in relation to that black hole into which this public document seemed to fall. Nor does it appear, according to municipal sources, that said order was communicated to the Local Police, although, they clarify, this is not a procedure that must be carried out in a forced manner to undertake the closure.
Likewise, the same sources confirm that said validation procedures, for which documentation has been received, do not suspend the execution of an administrative resolution, that of closure, which had become final after exhausting possible resources. There was therefore a crossover of effects between two files that in principle should not have occurred.
In this case, these are the procedures opened on account, on the one hand, of the withdrawal of the Teatre nightclub’s activity license – which gave rise to a first cessation order in January 2022 – and, on the other, of the request for its subsequent regularization, presented in March of that same year, with the intention of validating the irregular division of the premises into two, giving legal coverage to the creation of the Fonda Milagros nightclub.
Thus, although these processes ended up inappropriately intersecting when suspending a closure, they did not do so to execute it when in March 2023 a health inspection was carried out to validate the de facto situation existing in two premises that, According to the regulations, they had to remain closed. And they did not do so even though they are two files that come from the same department and deal with the irregular situation of the same establishment. Don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.
The truth is that, without the effective seal or its subsequent verification, both premises continued to operate and without the possibility, furthermore, of criminal proceedings being processed for a crime of disobedience by the owners, which was not initiated by complaint either. However, this lack of confirmation that they were still open – it must be remembered that, according to the last two councilors of Urban Planning, the municipal government did not officially know that these premises were operational – did not prevent the Teatre nightclub from being the subject of successive inspections. , in which the illegal situation in which they remained open was not addressed.
This is witnessed by a report dated March 2 drawn up by the Veterinary Services of the City Council, after a visit to the establishment. In fact, this document reports that another verification had even been carried out just a month before, stating that “all deficiencies have been corrected in the previous inspection visit dated February 9, 2023 and that the premises comply with hygienic-sanitary conditions and it should be registered in the Autonomous Health Registry of Retail Food Establishments”, since the initial activity license stated that Teatre had a kitchen.
Andrés Guerrero pointed out yesterday to LA VERDAD that these inspections are part of “an independent file, that of legalization” and that, therefore, the corresponding object was not to verify whether the order to cease activity had been executed, but rather verify whether the space examined had the necessary sanitary conditions for the granting of said authorization.
No security control
It must be remembered that, as reported last Monday by the current Councilor for Urban Planning, Antonio Navarro, who took the reins of the department again in June 2023, this parallel validation procedure remains unresolved to date. The popular councilor also defended that the City Council had not carried out checks before the tragic incident in relation to the security measures of these establishments, because what was appropriate was closure, not verification of their operating conditions.
The Autonomous Community recalled, for its part, “that the inspection function corresponds strictly to the town councils.” Likewise, the Association of Online Consumers and Users, Consumur, took advantage yesterday to request the Murcia City Council to report on all the inspections carried out at Teatre since its authorization in 2008 and until the date of declaring the cessation of activity. Likewise, he asked to know “if we are facing an isolated incident or we can find more premises operating without authorization.”
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