Almost nine years after the idea was published in the BOE and a complex urban planning procedure began, there is no known form or hotel chain that wants to exploit it for the Port of Malaga skyscraper, so it is moving forward amid questions towards the final evaluation before the Government. The lack of specificity is a surprising gap if one takes into account that the convenience or not of locating a 140-meter-high mass on a public plot in the middle of the bay has been one of the most passionate debates in the city in the last decade. scraping environmental, landscape, social and political sensitivities.
This week someone who has put the design and face to the plan since 2015 has gotten off the boat. The architect José Seguí has staunchly defended his tower, criticized from all sectors for its location, its administrative processing or its design. He has been attacked by politicians, academics, institutions (the Ombudsman or Icomos), illustrious citizens and ordinary citizens. Its ability to present an iconic building at the height of the preferential space on the Levante dam that it wants to be granted has been questioned. A bitter pill that he has drunk almost daily in hundreds of newspaper pages and hours of talk.
Seguí is Valencian, but he arrived in Malaga at the age of 14, and has made a career here: he was editor of the 1983 PGOU -National Urban Planning Award- and is the architect behind the City of Justice, La Rosaleda and the remodeling of the Cervantes Theater . On Monday he said enough. It wasn’t the criticism, but rather being sidelined from a project for which he has put his prestige at stake and for which he feels he is the champion, rightly so.
In his note his bitterness is clear that the developer has made his bed by inviting David Chipperfield, a British architect, to present a design to replace the one he has been defending for eight years. Suddenly, the recreations of his skyscraper, so reproduced in the press, went to the trash can.
Edged when I already saw the goal
Seguí’s letter gives an account of the state of the matter at the administrative level. A year ago the City Council completed the process to change the special plan of the Port in order to fit there a building with a surface area of 43,000 square meters and a height of up to 150 meters, multiplying by seven the limits that applied until then.
Then the screen changed, from the local to the national one. Now it must be the State that decides whether locating a skyscraper there for a luxury five-star hotel respects legality and has “general interest.” To do this, before November the promoter had to deliver an update of the basic project and a new financial economic study, and it did not comply. Seguí emphasizes that it was not his fault, but because Hesperia did “absolutely nothing” and ignored him.
After that deadline, it appeared in the local press that the developer is counting on Chipperfield to take charge of the final design. And a few days later, Sur noted that the building will be “slenderer” than expected. From the 116 meters of the “reduced” Seguí project to 140 on 25 floors. It was the obvious symptom that the Valencian architect was no longer painting anything, pushed to the shoulder when he already saw the goal. In his letter, he speaks of an “impossibility of collaborating and not even participating in its writing.” [del proyecto]”.
Hesperia has obtained an extra deadline until March 7, supposedly non-extendable, to present the Chipperfield project and the economic document to the Port Authority, which will review it before sending it to State Ports. The architect has, among others, a geotechnical challenge: there are doubts as to how the skyscraper can withstand a dam that is showing the effects of marine corrosion to the point of already being the subject of a million-dollar rehabilitation.
A “rabbit in a hat”
Mayor Francisco de la Torre (PP) said this week that he feels “appreciation and affection” for Seguí, and Carlos Rubio, president of the Port Authority, has invited the developer to “repeat” him in some way. It doesn’t seem likely. Rather, a probable legal battle appears on the horizon, which Seguí has already fought (and won) against other Qatari developers, those of the Marbella port of La Bajadilla, achieving compensation of 3.8 million for work that was ultimately not carried out.
For the Let’s Defend Our Horizon Platformwhich has been mobilizing for nine years against the construction of the skyscraper in that place, Chipperfield’s landing is an attempt to promote a project questioned by all political parties except the PP, the College of Architects, the San Telmo Academy and civil society , represented by a thousand allegations about the project, a record in Malaga.
“They are looking once again for the “honorable architect,” but he is the rabbit in the hat,” says Juan Antonio Triviño, spokesperson for the platform, who emphasizes that the decision to place or not place that mass in that place will be political. And the Council of Ministers must take it, if Puertos del Estado does not stop it before.
The “paraphernalia” of the Qatari fund and the arrival of Hesperia
To this change of architect we must add that the identity of the promoter remains hazy. Hence, Seguí and the presidents of the Port Authority of Malaga (Paulino Plata, with the PSOE in the Junta de Andalucía, and Carlos Rubio, with the PP) have been the visible faces until now.
The Qatari fund (Al Alfia, now allied with Hesperia) that is supposedly behind this supposedly emblematic work is barely known. A public presentation seven years ago, a meeting with the mayor and an interview with a media related to the project is his background. More remembered is the fleeting arrival of Ramón Calderón (former president of Real Madrid) as an emissary of the investors, who was never heard from again.
“It is a scheme in which common names of supposed sheikhs and relatives of the emir are used, with a lot of paraphernalia,” says Triviño. Supposed princely links are suggested, although the Arab dynasties are almost indecipherable for a Westerner, and in the city the memory of this type of dignitaries is infamous due to the pufo of Sheikh Al-Thani in Málaga CF.
Andalusian Hospitality, the promoter of the skyscraper, has managed with a capital of just 5,000 euros for a work estimated at 200 million, and four bank guarantees (for which it is paid, but which it does not disburse) for a total of 1.85 million euros. Just fifteen days ago, Hesperia’s entry and capital increase were formalized. Now the administrators of Andalusian are Al-Darwish Abdulla Darwish, Fakhroo Abdulla Darwish and Jorge Ferrer Graupera, CEO of Grupo Hesperia.
This hotel group had a turnover of 165 million euros in 2023, and has debts of 368 and assets of about 867, according to an analysis by Gonzalo Baratech for Crónica Global. It is difficult for him to face an operation of this magnitude alone, which would cost over 200. Hence, high-end hotel chains are being sought willing to exploit the future skyscraper, located next to the Malaga cruise terminal.
“It does not respond to the interests of the city but rather to a blow”
The platform has channeled the opposition of a relevant part of the citizens and, in the process, has highlighted the figure of La Farola, a historic lighthouse from 1817 that would be overshadowed by the skyscraper, and which is now an Asset of Cultural Interest.
In 2025 the project will definitively reach the central government. First to State Ports and, if you scroll through the screen, to the Council of Ministers. Meanwhile, the urban modification carried out by the City Council to fit the building into the urban plans has been appealed to the courts by the platform and the Academy of Fine Arts.
Triviño believes that the result of these lawsuits cannot ignore the fact that it is a “political project against a majority.” Although strongly requested, the municipal government did not call a citizen consultation to gauge the support for the skyscraper. The truth is that after adding detractors (the PSOE went from being in favor, to not speaking out and finally being against), now voices closely identified with the project, such as Diario Sur, are asking for reflection.
“We have been winning the debate because we have been introducing arguments. They have made it easy: they intend to install a mammoth in a very sensitive and emblematic place. The project does not respond to the interests of the city or the port, but rather to what is being called a big shot,” says Triviño, who concludes: “We don’t care about the architect: even if the monkey dresses in silk, she stays cute. “We don’t want that building in that place, where Malaga overlooks the sea.”
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