The demolition of the Algarrobico hotel reaches Strasbourg

The intricate judicial labyrinth in which the Algarrobico hotel in the Cabo de Gata Natural Park (Almería) is entangled, which prevents its demolition, has added a new milestone: the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). This international judicial body has accepted the complaint filed by Greenpeace last February and will investigate the irregularities surrounding this complex, authorized by the Carboneras City Council in 2003 and which has become a symbol of wild urbanism on the Mediterranean coast.

“It is good news that could mark the end of decades of non-compliance with court rulings,” said José Ignacio Domínguez, a lawyer for Greenpeace, in a telephone conversation with this newspaper. The environmental NGO brought to Strasbourg the latest Supreme Court ruling of 2022, which established that as long as the Carboneras City Council did not comply with the 2018 ruling of the High Court of Justice of Andalusia that forced the council to classify the Algarrobico area as non-urbanizable in its General Urban Development Plan, these lands had to be considered as urbanizable. Greenpeace requested protection from the ECHR, arguing that a final ruling – such as the 2018 ruling of the TSJA – cannot be subordinated to the will of a municipal government to comply. “The Supreme Court ruling attributes judicial powers to the Carboneras City Council, as long as it does not modify its PGOU and that is inconceivable,” argues Domínguez.

The ECHR has ruled that the legality of the decision of the Spanish Supreme Court must be investigated. “It is a fundamental principle, in any State governed by the rule of law, that final judgments annulling a provision of a general nature, such as the PGOU, take effect from the day the ruling is published,” explains Greenpeace in the press release in which they have reported the decision of Strasbourg. The NGO considers that the decision of the Supreme Court may constitute a violation of article 6.1 of the Convention on Human Rights because it deprives citizens of the right to have an independent judge and effective judicial protection.

If the European High Court rules in favor of Greenpeace, it will also put an end to de facto The Andalusian court has sent several ultimatums to the municipal government of the Almeria town to modify its PGOU and prove that it includes the qualification of “non-urbanizable and specially protected land” of the area in which the complex is built. The council – where socialists, independents and the PP have governed all this time, until last spring it was ousted by a motion of censure presented by the PSOE and Ciudadanos – has been delaying and putting forward different excuses, the last at the end of this month of July, where it assured the TSJA that the current PGOU has included the 2018 ruling as an accessory note, a response that has not satisfied the Andalusian high court.

“This is all a joke,” Domínguez sums up, referring to the failure of the Carboneras City Council to comply with the ruling. Over the last two decades, the Algarrobico hotel has accumulated up to fifty judicial pronouncements, 20 of which have confirmed its illegality. Of all of them, the only court decision that has had a real effect was the precautionary suspension ordered by a court of first instance in Almería on 23 February 2006.

The ECHR will also have to rule on the revocation of the appointment as rapporteur of the TSJA of the judge María del Mar Jiménez, who in 2014 declared the hotel suitable for development. “We consider that she cannot be impartial,” says the Greenpeace lawyer, who warns that another of the signatories of that sentence, Jorge Muñoz Cortés, is legally advising the Carboneas City Council through the Martínez-Echeverría law firm, where he currently works.

“For the first time in the history of Greenpeace Spain, and after almost 20 years of fighting against the symbol of the mistreatment of the Spanish coast, the Strasbourg Court is going to investigate our complaint. We have been battling from court to court for almost two decades and this decision sends a clear and forceful message to those who continue to commit illegal acts so that the ruin of Algarrobico does not disappear,” concludes María José Caballero, spokesperson for the environmental organization, in the statement from Greenpeace.