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The Izquierda Unida is claiming victory today as the Supreme Court of Andalucia ordered the suspension of the PORN (Plan de Ordenacion de Recursos Naturales, Plan for the Ordenation of Natural Resouces) for Almeria, which the IU claimed gave the company Azata del Sol clear permission to continue with it’s (currently, allegedly) illegal hotel El Algarrobico.
It seems that the plan made the beach where El Algarrobico is situated “urbanisable”. Which meant that El Algarrobico hotel could then open, as it would be situated on urbanisable land. Despite the fact that it is currently clearly within the natural park of Ca bo de Gata, which is protected land and (supposedly) untouchable.
The Supreme Court of Andalucia agreed with Izquierda Unida (which includes the Green party) and said that the current implementation of the PORN was “incompatible with previous decrees”. It ordered the immediate suspension of the PORN and the return to the previous (circa 1994) plan until it could be drawn up afresh.
The Junta has announced its intention to appeal to Madrid against this decision, despite the fact that they seem to have been caught red handed in, if not corruption, then certainly a very dubious decision. Remember that the POTALA (overall strategy plan for the area) clearly marks the area as “natural park”, and the area under question has been natural park for over 20 years.
Like them or not, most have to agree that IU is the only party that really fights against corruption. Perhaps it’s simply due to the fact that they really haven’t ever been in power anywhere other than cities and therefore haven’t had the chance to dirty their hands to the extent the other parties have.
Here in Caceres both the PP and the PSOE have done outright illegal re-zoning moves and the only party to raise a fuss has been IU. In fact they are currently fighting against a Corte Ingles being built in a completely illegal area.