The shovel of a backhoe gnaws this Tuesday hard at the columns of the top floors of what was once the hotel in Arenales del Sol, a coastal district of Elche (Alicante). For three weeks, the demolition teams will put an end to the remains of an establishment that closed 40 years ago, which has dragged its agony since 1997 in the courts and that a year and four months later abides by a resolution of the General Directorate of Coasts and begins to disappear. The history of Arenales and its nearly 4,000 neighbors, half registered, enters a new phase. In Spain there are numerous buildings that escape the demolition sentences – the best known is El Algarrobico, the illegal mass that has been on a beach in Almería for 15 years – but in the case of Elche the end has been different.
For the mayor of Elche, the socialist Carlos González, the demolition constitutes a “historic event”: “Today begins the end point of a long conflict that has been very complex to resolve.” After closing at the end of the 70s, just 15 years after its inauguration in 1963, the Arenales hotel became a stone in the shoe of all the governments that have passed through the Elche City Council. A stone, yes, of an enormous size that, as time passed, not only became an outdated structure “that damaged the image and appearance of the Arenales district,” according to the mayor, but also threatened the neighbors due to the danger of falling rubble and the accumulation of seawater in its shallows barely surrounded by masonry fences, an invitation for rats and mosquitoes.
The ruins of the hotel created by the businessman Tomás Durá and his wife, Maruja Sabater, shadowed, literally and figuratively, the coastline of the Elche district. Its location, in the middle of the dune beach with difficult accessibility and very close to the Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández airport, made it a jewel for late-Franco high society, but after its closure, it was nothing more than a hindrance. In 1997, the municipality of Elche took the first steps to carry out its demolition, with the declaration of ruin for the tourist establishment. It was a decision that would lead to what González defines as “a long administrative and judicial battle.”
The company that owns the skeleton of the building, Princesol, obtained a license to rehabilitate the old structure – increasingly degraded – but instead tried to build a new one without municipal permits to try to extend the life of the hotel. However, the setbacks in the courts accumulated. In 2018, he requested the demolition of the original remains, understanding that there is a serious danger of the building collapsing. Costas accepts and imposes its conditions in a trial that reaches the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community. But in December 2019 comes the final lace of the “mamotreto”, as the neighbors call it. The Supreme Court dictates that the new work is also irregular and must disappear. Costas signs the total demolition in June of last year. But the demolition doesn’t start until this Tuesday.
The demolition is the second phase of a plan that, first, focused on removing “a thousand kilos of asbestos” from the hotel ruins. “It was hard and meticulous work,” says González, “which was shown to be compatible with the summer and the dynamics of Arenales beach” and which has not interfered with the vacations of neighbors, seasonal residents and tourists, in his opinion. The harmful material “has been sent to a Cuenca landfill,” specialized in hazardous industrial waste.
The work now opens the progressive dismantling, “step by step”, according to the mayor, of the remains still standing and will take three weeks. González anticipates that, later, they will proceed to “the removal of the debris produced by the demolition”, which will also cost “between three and four weeks of work.” Finally, and under the criteria of the Coastal Law, “the regeneration and renaturation of the beach” will be affected. “Next summer,” González says, “visitors and neighbors will enjoy Arenales beach without the structure that so ugly the environment and that has generated so many annoyances.”
The neighbors trust that the disappearance of the tourist skeleton stranded on its coastline breathes life into a district without a shopping center, without a school and with only one ambulatory. In fact, the president of the neighborhood association, Fernando Durá, has always insisted on the need to replace the hotel that gave life to a remote coast with another that revitalizes the area. At the moment, the municipality of Elche is executing a plan for the district to “improve public spaces and services”, it has built a large-capacity drinking water tank, negotiates with the Provincial Council for the construction of a socio-cultural center and has auctioned “a plot for tertiary use, which has been bought by an investor, so that a shopping center can be installed, ”says González.
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