The Administrative Court of Alicante has ruled in favour of Calp Town Council after declaring the expiry of the licence it granted in December 2017 to the company Sol de Calpe for the construction of a 35-storey twin-tower hotel on a plot of land located on Avenida Juan Carlos I, near the salt flats. It therefore dismisses the appeal lodged by the company and considers the Calp Town Council's decision to be ‘in accordance with the law’.
The Calp Town Council declared the licence expired after verifying that the deadline for its execution had passed without work having begun and following the approval of amendment D14 to the Calp General Urban Development Plan, which included new urban planning regulations with which the building licence granted did not comply.
Sol de Calpe argues in its appeal that the licence should not have expired because it considers that since it was granted, a series of circumstances have prevented the start of the works. In this regard, reference is made to the contentious-administrative appeal filed by the Valencian Regional Government in 2018, which led to the suspension of the licence, which was finally dismissed, as was the subsequent appeal, by a ruling of the High Court of Justice, which became final on 10 September 2021.
The company also argues that it has repeatedly stated, in various letters submitted to the City Council, its intention to start the works and that, therefore, there is no ‘conduct of abandonment or withdrawal of its intention to build’.
However, the Administrative Court states in its ruling that: ‘The plaintiff merely states that it wants to carry out the works, but this is nothing more than an empty statement. Since the ruling of the Chamber was declared final on 10 December 2021, it has not taken any material action to carry out the works’.
Likewise, the ruling refers to the fact that the company did not have the financing to carry out the work, as well as to the modification of the planning to which this project did not comply. ‘As case law indicates, the licence guarantees the right to build, but not the immutability of the urban planning regime,’ it highlights.
This is a first instance ruling, which means that it can be appealed.