Toni Pérez, the Mayor of Benidorm (Alicante), has not ruled out that the City Council will end up “knocking on any door” if it has to pay 283 million euros plus interest to landowners in the Serra Gelada natural park as compensation for the urban development rights of their property included in the APR-7 sector.
The Mayor met with the head of the Consell, Juanfran Pérez Llorca, at the Palau de la Generalitat and made statements to the media that hinted at this.
When asked if he thinks the Valencian regional government should help pay for that, the mayor said, “When the technicians tell us what options the Benidorm City Council has for dealing with that ruling, we will give a full account, first to the municipal corporation itself, because we are accountable to it, because we are members of that corporation.”
He said, “If we have to knock on any door, we will, and why not the State? If we are talking about protecting a natural park, why not the Government of Spain as well? And why not Europe?”
The Mayor also said, “Ten minutes after” the Benidorm City Council’s plenary session ended, he called a meeting of the council’s board of spokespersons to tell them about a document that the owners of those lands sent to the court asking for the sentence to be carried out.
The owners of the land in the Serra Gelada natural park say that the amount of money they want as compensation is “more than 352 million euros,” which would be split into 283 million euros and interest.
Pérez said that at that meeting, he told the representatives that the municipal legal and economic services will “have the opportunity” to explain to the whole council “the path” that the local government should “follow” in the next few days. He said, “As we have always done from the very beginning.”
“Full Transparency”
The Mayor said again that the council was “absolutely transparent” in this process and that “all issues” had to be looked at “fundamentally, from the rigour and criteria of the technicians, as, at least, has been done in the Benidorm City Council since 2015, and not in any other way.”
“I have always said that private property is private, and that when someone wants to protect the environment and a mountain range like the Serra Gelada, and wants present and future generations to enjoy a natural park, and for that park to become the most visited in the Valencian Community shortly after being designated as such, well, that has a price that the administration must pay,” he said.
After that, the mayor of Benidorm said, “Now that a court has ruled on it, I don’t think there will be any doubt about compliance.”
He underlined, “That has been our line from minute one, since the properties filed a multi-million dollar monetary claim in 2017, and we have been, first and foremost, defending the general interest, which was the interest of all Benidorm residents, according to the technical criteria.”
He said that “now comes” the “end” of a legal process “in which the right amount of money to be paid for those lands that all Valencians” and “everyone” have been “enjoying as a natural park for 21 years now.” “And so, whoever is in charge must fix it, and that’s what we’re working on,” he said in the end.
Author: Derek Appleton
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