Who was director of the Canarian Agency for the Protection of the Natural Environment, Rafael Fariñawas clear from the beginning regarding what would happen in the illegal city of Lomo Negro, in El Fraile (Arona)reported by this newspaper: “These lands are condemned to not being able to be reclassified as urban by the City Council for at least 20 yearswell the Canary Islands Land Law establishes that the urban planning instruments may not reclassify land that, being rural, has undergone an irregular process of urban subdivision until said period has elapsed.”
Exactly, that is Lomo Negro, the illegal city that has grown wildly in the last eight years, between 2015 and 2023. A huge rustic land of agricultural protection that has been sold by plots on well-known real estate portals for the construction or placement of homes , something that is prohibited, and highly persecuted, legally. Including prison sentences.
In search of a legal “exit”
The latest episode of this saga has been the statements made by promoters of the digital division of the “Sol del Sur” region, in which they admit, not only that illegalities have been committed, but that dozens of homes will have to be demolished, At the same time, they assure that they will try to get the Arona City Council to find solutions that allow legalizing what, probably, has no possible way out.
According to the statements made by this promoter, whose explanations are reproduced by “Sol del Sur”, there live in Lomo Negro, at least a thousand people. Of them, according to DIARIO DE AVISOS, about two hundred managed to register. All this when more than a hundred structures or homes of all kinds have already been built.
The illegal plots have been sold at a price of around 29,000 euros.
However, the reality of this case is that the illegal urbanization was the subject of an action by the Civil Guard’s Seprona and a complaint from the Canary Islands Agency for the Protection of the Natural Environment that, finally, ended with the Prosecutor’s Office opening an investigation into regard.
And, despite all this, the plots continued to be sold on the internet. That is to say, the Lomo Negro operation did not lack warnings for the promoters about its alleged illegality.
“Many houses will be demolished”
In the article in this regional digital, the promoter of the subdivision assures that “many of the houses will have to be demolished”, while admitting that “we have done something wrong; that is undeniable. “You cannot divide it into rustic plots” and defends that the Arona City Council and the owners reach an agreement, all under the argument that “there are families who have made a great effort and do not deserve to have their houses taken away from them.” “Little houses”, all of them, built on the ground that those same promoters sold them through advertisements that remained even after the matter had come to light.
Although it is undeniable that many of these families, the main victims, would have invested savings in these homes, it is also true that the economic benefit for the parcelers could amount to many hundreds of thousands of euros and even millions, which will be a matter that must be resolved by justice.
Homes, premises and vacation rentals
The area has homes, fixed and removable, neighbors, commercial premises, industrial warehouses and even land for celebrations, while the neighbors aspire to a more than complicated legalization, not to mention that many of the homes located there are intended for the vacation rental.
The Environmental Protection Agency, with respect to the plotters, explained that “they are, for the most part, companies created for this purpose that sell plots of rural agricultural protection land, illegally segregated, and that go so far as to violate the seals practiced by the Administration.” , so that they fail to comply with the restoration orders issued and final through administrative means”, which adds even more seriousness to the matter, in terms of also violating a seal established by the authorities.
The modus operandi that has made the growth of this illegal city possible is not complicated: the farms have been segregated into properties of 10,000 square meters, the maximum allowed by law, and the buyers are made participants in a percentage of the property. the farm. This is in regards to notarial and registry matters.
The possibilities of legalization? The prescription of infractions, taking into account that, at the time of initiating an administrative file, the time for it to occur is paralyzed, or via the General Plan.
