Benidorm is usually news for its enormous flow of tourists or the considerable pressure that these exercise in their public services. Now it is for something very different and much more delicate: its City Council appears to Financial abyss. Literally. An ancient litigation that dates back to two decades threatens to force him to pay the whopping 340 million of euros, a complicated sum for any town in Spain but that in the case of the Almeria town is a Damocles sword: it is equivalent to 2.5 years of budget.
The Consistory Keep the battle In court to avoid payment, but He already warns that assuming would force him to do without employees and cut services.
What happened? That curves are guessed in the urban, economic and judicial future of Benidorm, one of the great mecas of national tourism. Although there is nothing firm yet, the City Council of the Alicante town faces The threat to have to pay more than 340 million of euros due to an agreement reached in 2003 with land owners located in Serra Gela.
To get an approximate idea of what would mean such a disbursement for the Benidormean coffers, it is good to remember that in the municipal budget of last year it was 142 million of euros.
Why is it in that situation? To answer that question, it is necessary to go back a couple of decades, to 2003, when the City Council, headed by Vicente Pérez Devesa (PP), reached an agreement with two societies that had urban rights on land of the APR-7 sector, two companies linked to Francisco Murcia Puchadesformer president of the Valencian promoters.
What exactly agreed? As remember The countrythe farms in question were located in Serra, declared shortly after (July 2005) Natural Park. The idea of the Alicante Consistory was to take these land and compensate for their owners with urban uses in other parts of the city. That was at least the theory, which gave rise to an agreement extended in 2010 and 2013.
And what happened? That the thing was complicated. The years passed, the extensions followed and the agreement did not go from paper. The former owner of the land of Serra Gelado claimed his right to compensation and the Consistory questioned The validity of the agreements since the ordination of the Natural Park knocked down the buildable that initially did the land. Two difficult positions that (as expected) have given rise to a long and complex judicial process, still open, but that has been clearing during the last year.
His most recent chapter arrived only two months ago, In Junewhen the Superior Court of the Valencian Community threw a jug of cold water at the claims of the City Council and gave the reason to the former owners of the land. The ruling ratifies an earlier sentence, from May 2024, which considers the agreements signed more than two decades. That does not mean that the Consistory has thrown the towel. In fact already He has resorted to the Constitutional Court.
Why is it so serious? Beyond the political debate and the padding of reproaches to which the lawsuit has given rise, the case is serious for a simple reason: the economic repercussions it can have for Benidorm. Seeing that the agreement not executed the former owners of the land requested an assessment that raised the price of the land to 280 million of euros. A considerable amount to which interests are added, which would now exceed 60 million.
In total More than 340 millionsuch a high sum that would be equivalent to more or less two and a half years of municipal budget. The Consistory He has already warned That if you are forced to pay them, it would stay against the strings, so it claims the precautionary suspension of the payment, remembering that it keeps open other litigation related to the same case that “they are giving the reason” to the city.
“The people of Benidorm asks the Constitutional Court to declare that the fundamental right of the Benidorm City Council has been violated to effective judicial protection without defenselessness and there are consequences,” Crows The mayor.
What would he mean for the City Council? You talk of technical bankruptcy. And the City Council has not taken in warn Of the serious consequences that a payment of such caliber would have in its day to day, including the dismissal of employees or the suppression of public services. A few weeks ago the local government warned that disbursement would lead to “a damage of impossible or difficult repair” and that it would need to resort to state or autonomous financing to assume it.
The lawyer who represents the owners says that they seek to “open a dialogue to avoid the breakdown”, but the solution does not seem simple: if something does not have plenty of urban land is available urban land of municipal ownership with which to compensate them, as remember The confidentialwhich slides that the city has projected for decades urbanizable land in the Levante plan.
Are there more options? Benidorm is a peculiar municipality. Although you only have censored 74,600 neighbors His tourist pole condition gives him a considerable floating population. A recent study The monthly average of visitors in more than 252,000, a figure that is triggered in summer: in August it exceeds 2.1 million. The same report estimates that in its greatest day the city reaches peaks of more than 360,000 people, including residents and visitors.
Such a avalanche of tourists affects the pressure that the City Council supports and the demand for municipal services. In summary, there is a considerable difference between the needs that correspond to the census and real population, inflated by visitors, which translates into A huge “hole” of millionaire infinance. The payment of a millionaire compensation would aggravate that imbalance. In his favor, the Alicante City Council has possible revenues derived from tourism, as a sector rate that today its mayor You don’t see profitable.
Images | Maksim Shutov (UNSPLASH) and Martijn vonk (Unspash)
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