An external legal report commissioned by the Adeje City Council questions the legality of the stoppage of the Cuna del Alma tourist complex by the Ministry of Ecological Transition, Fight against Climate Change and Territorial Planning of the Government of the Canary Islands. He argues that the Executive’s action is out of time and that it adopts decisions that violate municipal autonomy.
“The resolution implies the review by the Autonomous Administration of a firm declarative act of rights -the approval of the urbanization project and, before, the review of the PGO-, without following the procedure, nor the legally established deadlines and without legitimacy to do so”, it concludes. With the revocation of such municipal decisions, the Ecological Transition “incurs incompetence and violates local autonomy”, is stated in one of the legal reports available to the Consistory. It determines that the approval of the environmental evaluation by the regional Administration, “the same one of which the General Directorate for the Fight against Climate Change, reaffirms the nullity of that unilateral decision, as long as it goes against the acts themselves.
The City Council regrets the institutional disloyalty and points out that there is a possible misuse of power
In this way it is argued, according to the legal text, the extemporaneity of the decisions of the council, whose incompetence to act is determined in the Land Law. “The appearance of a plant species not considered in the environmental assessment does not determine the application of the Environmental Responsibility Law, but leads to the Environmental Assessment Law”, which “establishes the channel for the modification of the strategic environmental assessment or the environmental impact assessment, corresponding to the decision to carry out this modification to the environmental body, “he reflects.
In this point, the study defends that the Administration of the Autonomous Community is “incompetent” to act. «The competence to review the determinations of the environmental evaluation falls on the substantive body to promote it and on the environmental body to make the decision to modify or not. After the Land Law of 2017, both are municipal bodies. The fact that the promoter went to the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands requesting authorization to transfer the specimens of the plant species does not alter that distribution of powers ».
power diversion
From the City Council they insist on their “maximum interest and respect” for safeguarding and protecting the natural environment of the area and share with the Ministry the need to preserve the species and heritage that require it. However, they “regret” what they interpret as “a clear administrative disloyalty and between institutions”, understanding that the Ministry and the counselor “have called into question, from the outset, the work of municipal technicians and the procedures of a rigorous file in which Adeje has been working for many years with due legal and legal advice.
The Adejero Consistory has legal arguments that raise the possibility that the council, in its actions and demonstrations since the work began, “had incurred in a serious misuse of power and government action”, when announcing decisions and actions “long before being ruled by any competent body or technician”. Something that, remember, is not unusual. In this context, they cite that the resolution of the council “has not followed the procedure, nor the legally established deadlines, and does not have jurisdiction or legitimacy to act in the way it does.”
In mid-afternoon yesterday, the unrest grew in the Adejero Town Hall: «We remain surprised by the insistence on pointing out possible compensation to be faced by this Administration. These statements are not understandable when the one who has made arbitrary decisions that are difficult to sustain and has paralyzed the works, legally initiated, is the council itself, something that will have to defend and explain where appropriate. From the City Council they point out that it is the Canary Islands Government that will have to answer for those decisions “that do not seem very adjusted to the law, although that will have to be said by the corresponding body.” From the City Council, those who doubt its behavior are reminded that the consistory “maintains a trajectory of actions in accordance with the law, for decades, which demonstrate this.”
Adeje will have to indemnify only if the file determines it
The Ministry of Ecological Transition assured yesterday that the Adeje City Council would pay compensation to the promoters of Cuna del Alma in the “hypothetical situation, which is far from being raised, in the procedure that is open and in its early stages of processing” . When the regional councilor José Antonio Valbuena referred to it in statements made the day before yesterday “he was responding to a question regarding what would happen in the event that an urban planning license was badly granted.” Currently, the process of precautionary suspension of the Cuna del Alma project is open to adequately analyze possible effects on the endemic flora of the islands. The file is in the phase of receiving allegations and “it will not have final resolutions until the analysis of these allegations is carried out and the detailed study of the plots included in the project is carried out.” It will be then that the motions for resolutions will be adopted. At the same time, the Agency for the Protection of the Natural Environment is processing another file due to the absence of the environmental impact statement. A period of allegations will be opened to the affected parties and, after analyzing them, a final proposal will be prepared. “It will not be until that moment when it is determined whether there are compensation rights, which in any case will depend on the analysis of various factors that are currently impossible to elucidate.” Until the files are completed, “all resolution possibilities are open, without ruling out any of them.” | DE