The TSJM demolishes the private residence that Almeida authorized in Retiro on a plot with exhausted buildability

Judicial setback for one of the most controversial private urban projects recently approved by the capital’s City Council. The Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) has annulled the Special Plan issued by the Almeida Government a little over a year ago, which allowed the construction of a private residence on a plot located at the beginning of Avenida del Mediterráneo.

Justice strikes down a project that included building a nine-story building and three parking basements. An action of 4,032 square meters approved on a property known as Los Chopos, promoted by a geriatric chain, which manages other nursing homes and which wanted to open a center called Caser Residencial Retiro here.

The ruling is devastating for the municipal team because it considers three of the four reasons given by the PSOE in a lawsuit it filed in January of this year. The socialists considered that the Madrid City Council was making an “invention” by calculating the buildability of this plot based on that existing in the residential blocks that border the area, “a modus operandi that is in no case foreseen,” the party explained in its complaint. “This new buildability is determined according to the uses located in the same block, not in the surrounding ones,” he adds, recalling that the possibility of new constructions is “exhausted” and that the project, as proposed, is illegal.

The TSJM admits that the plan gave the plot a buildable area greater than that allowed by the General Urban Planning Plan. Also that the strategic environmental evaluation requirements and the mandatory transfers derived from the increase in buildability were omitted, which violates urban planning regulations. Therefore, the ruling annuls the plan and imposes the costs of the process on the City Council and the co-defendants, limiting them to a maximum of 2,000 euros for each party.

“We said several times that it was poorly done, that it was a PP scam from Madrid,” says Antonio Giraldo, the councilor who led the socialist criticism and who now considers that the “tailor-made suit for the private interests of a person who “runs this hospital, who wanted to make an extension that was clearly illegal.”

Giraldo also points out that the individual should have made a plan that included transfers to the City Council. “That is, give us Madrid residents what we deserve, either in square meters or in money. They have tried to evade it against the regulations,” he laments while emphasizing that the people of Madrid are going to have to pay 2,000 euros in costs. “I also hope that you don’t have the bad idea of ​​resorting to what you are never going to win.”