Twin towers saga not over yet
Regional government make final appeal against court demolition order in attempt to save €100million
LAST year, the nation’s Supreme Court ordered the Valencian regional government to demolish the Gemelos 28 twin towers that were illegally built too close to the sea, in Benidorm’s Punta Llisera.
The cost of such a mammoth operation easily comes to €100m, hence the regional government is making one last legal bid to try to get out of paying for the mammoth demolishment operation and compensating the blocks’ apartment owners who had purchased apartments in good faith, not knowing the blocks were illegally built on protected land.
The Partido Popular headed the regional government that granted the building licences for the apartments, even though coastal laws protected the land they were to be built on.
In 2012, the Supreme Court annulled said licence and ordered them to be demolished. In 2017, an apartment owner from another apartment block went to court to request that the demolishment be carried out, and this is when the Supreme Court ordered the regional government, now in hands of the Socialists and Compromís nationalists, to carry out the original court order and pay all costs involved including compensation.
Hence, it has come as no surprise that the government has taken the only possible legal action left to take and has requested an annulment of the sentence, which in all likelihood will be thrown out, but this does buy them more time.
Atrium Beach
The owners of Atrium Beach hotel complex, which currently stands as an unfinished shell, due to the Supreme Court annulling the building licence, appealed together with Villajoyosa town hall, to allow the hotel to be finished. The Supreme Court threw out said request, so the sentence ordering the top floors to be demolished still stands.
The owners will continue to appeal.