The flipping hotel was built on a legal building license, and the claims by the ecologists have been thrown out of court on a technicality, the High Court of Andalucia ruled today.
The Algarrobico building license was legally issued according to the situation at the time (2003) said the panel of judges today, overturning a series of lower court rulings that all said the opposite. The ruling furthermore states that the rights of the promoter (Azata del Sol) and the town of Carboneras were trampled on by the previous lower court rulings.
Furthermore, the allegations lodged by a series of ecologist groups were thrown out of court on a technicality – they hadn’t provided sufficient paperwork to prove that the allegations were the true decisions taken by the ruling panels of the bodies said the court, so out of the window went all their evidence.
This doesn’t mean the hotel is legal. It means the hotel building license was valid, without entering into the question of whether or not it should have been issued (the overall zoning plan of the town is in the courts for being illegal). The court has basically said that within what was thought to be the situation in 2003, the license was valid and the promoter did nothing wrong in asking for it, not the townhall in granting it.
Ensuring all the politicians on the hook slide off back into their murky swamps quite happily, and leaving the way open for a massive compensation claim from the builders of the hotel.
The ruling has also been neatly issued just before everyone buggers off for the August holidays, meaning it would be difficult to get any paperwork together to contest this. Very neat.