The Municipality of Arafo He has been sentenced by the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands, in a sentence known last Friday, to pay almost 300,000 euros to the heirs of Miguel Orozco for a forced expropriation of some 8,000 square meters of land in the area called Piedra del Barranco.
The City Council, having only ten days to make the compensation payment, since it is a final judgment, called an extraordinary plenary session for today where the corresponding payment will be approved and, subsequently, given that there is no money budgeted for To do this, approve a credit modification for that amount to make the payment before the date set. That money will come out of the positive surplus of the treasury, an amount that was planned to be invested in the budget in the repair and paving of rural roads and highways, and which will now have to wait for the next financial year, as the mayor, Juan Ramón Martín, acknowledged yesterday.
How did you get to this point? It all started in 1995 when the Arafo Urban Development Plan was approved, with Domingo Calzadilla as mayor. In it, that land was planned in Piedra del Barranco, belonging to the Orozco family, destined for an urban park. By not buying the same in the five years covered by the Law, its owner could claim forced expropriation, something he did. After a long judicial process, in which the City Council was initially agreed, the Orozco family appealed and finally the TSJC has agreed, without any possibility that the Consistory can continue to appeal the sentence. In such a guise that yesterday, after knowing all the municipal groups the payment file, it was approved unanimously in the informative commission, and today it will be endorsed in plenary.
Mayor Juan Ramón Martín said yesterday that, “as it could not be otherwise, we abide by the ruling and have already started the administrative procedures to deal with it, although it is true that it is a severe blow to the municipal coffers that have just been get out of a complicated situation, and we don’t have the economic muscle to respond to this circumstance”. In addition, he added that “this also breaks an illusion to fix roads and give back to the people all the efforts they have made for so many years with this adjustment plan, projects that are now relegated to next year”, recalling the mayor that “already we are used to resurfacing from problems and we will continue to be combative in the face of this economic stick that we are going to overcome”.
The legal figure of forced expropriation entails the coercive deprivation of private property of certain subjects in order to promote a public interest, mediating the corresponding compensation.
