The Palace of the Duchess of Swedish welcomes those who approach the Latin in a straight line from Tirso de Molina. Built at the end of the 18th century and with an area of more than 7,000 square meters, it has more than two decades empty between lawsuits and attempts of the Madrid City Council for giving some kind of utility. The Provincial Court has just annulled the three -month prison sentence that had been imposed on the former Consistory Heritage Director, accused by the Prosecutor’s Office for not having protected the building and had led to its ruin. The judges reproach that she was convicted despite the fact that the competence to take care of the palace was not even from her department.
The building, whose facade was used in the series ‘The Ministry of Time’, has been subject to dozens of lawsuits in recent decades. Most of these judgments, more than 60 in total, were related to the compensation that owners should collect for expropriation, but one of them was processed by criminal proceedings. The complaint presented by the Prosecutor’s Office was against Amalia Castro-Rial, director of Heritage, who was in office between 2004 and 2012, during the mandates of Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón. According to the Public Ministry, he did nothing to conserve the Palace of the Duchess of Swedish, protected since 1997 and the object of a special plan of the City Council itself, already with it in office. That, according to the accusation and the first judge who sentenced the case, aggravated his state of ruin and acted “leaving the palace to his fate.”
As Eldiario.es has been able to verify, the Provincial Court of Madrid has annulled that three -month prison sentence for a crime against historical heritage, also exonerating the City Council to respond as a subsidiary civilian. The judges are hard with the first sentence that gave their conviction: it is not even clear that the responsibility of taking care of that 18th century palace outside the Directorate of Heritage and that this abandonment aggravates the state of the building beyond the “deterioration of the passage of time.”
The Court accuses the criminal magistrate who condemned Castro-Rial and the City Council to incur a “patent valuation error”: the experts, the reports and finally the witnesses who appeared in the trial pointed to the responsibility that the responsibility was, in any case, of the area of the arts, current Department of Culture. Some documents, such as the agreements of the Governing Board, were not “clear enough,” acknowledges the hearing, but other tests “conclude sharply” that the competition was not, in any case, of equity.
That, according to the Madrid court, closes the door to which Castro-Rial can be criminally responsible for the deterioration of the palace by not having what is legally called “guarantor position” on its state, also discarding that “any non-compliance” administrative, if it has existed, can “generate criminal responsibility.” “During the eight years of the defendant’s mandate, no imminent risk has been accredited or detailed,” follow the magistrates.
The Palace, follows the sentence, was declared in a state of Ruina already in 1995 and although it is true that the special plan was never launched, the demolitions that had to be undertaken according to justice even revealed new aspects of the building of great heritage value: “As a result of the demolitions, the primitive facade east of the chapel has been in sight Gnomon declining sun inverted with Latin legend. ”
Nullified and reopening condemnation
The acquittal of the former Patrimony Director of the City Council between 2004 and 2012 arrives in The final stretch of the use of the palace as projected by the town hall of José Luis Martínez-Almeida: half a million budgeted in 2025 to locate a Social Welfare Center, after several years of works and claims of neighborhood movements so that its use is endowment and equipment in the neighborhood.
The sentences of the case draw the trajectory of this palace since its expropriation, with more than fifty lawsuits for compensation, a judicial statement of Ruina in the mid -1990s, its administrative protection in the municipal regulations of 1997 and, finally, a special plan of 2005 that did not be implemented.
The sentence issued by the Provincial Court, which is still appealed by the Prosecutor’s Office before the Supreme Court, not only withdraws the three -month prison sentence for the former patrimony director of the City of Madrid. Also its obligation, and the subsidiary conviction of the City Council, to pay “the aggravation of the damages detected in the building” from 2005 to the partial demolition orders of 2013. The first reform works, which did not be executed, were valued in several hundred thousand euros.
The judges remember another similar case: that of the demolition of a blasting house of the seventeent The responsibilities that proceed by the loss suffered by the municipal heritage are required, since this is a consequence of the poor management and lack of economic means of the Madrid City Council as an organization, and not because of the behavior of those who promptly were in charge of certain negotiated ones ”.
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