canary islands hotels demolition orders

Canary Islands Government unaware of hotels facing demolition

Compiled with the help of artificial intelligence, based on Spanish-language information. Source below the article.

Canary Islands Government admits it does not know how many hotels face demolition

The Canary Islands Government does not know how many hotels across the archipelago are subject to demolition orders — and has made no effort to find out. That is the conclusion to be drawn from the regional executive’s official response to a public information request submitted by Canarias Ahora, which sought to establish the number of tourist complexes in the Islands facing demolition orders, whether total or partial, final or still in the process of being enforced.

This newspaper requested that information after the Audiencia Nacional recently annulled a demarcation in the south of Gran Canaria affecting a four-star hotel that has been subject to a partial demolition order since 2010 — specifically the San Agustín Beach Club, in San Bartolomé de Tirajana, which was found to have occupied public domain land. The case has once again highlighted the administration’s painfully slow pace in enforcing rulings of this kind. And it is neither the first nor will it be the last.

What the requested information should have included

The requested list should have included the identification of the establishment, the date and the body that issued the ruling, the reason for the demolition (occupation of public domain land, expiry of the concession, annulment of the licence or another cause), the state of enforcement and, where applicable, any pending deadlines or appeals.

The Canary Islands Government, however, rejected the public information request, which was made under the Transparency Law, arguing that it cannot forward it to the competent body able to resolve it owing to the different causes that can give rise to proceedings of this nature — urban planning infringements, affecting the maritime-terrestrial public domain — and the different public administrations with competence depending on each case.

The ruling, signed by the Technical General Secretariat of the Ministry of Tourism and Employment, headed by Jessica de León (Partido Popular), also adds that the department has no record of proceedings initiated during this legislative term [since summer 2023] or stemming from the immediately previous term [2019-2023] that have resulted in a demolition order for hotels and/or tourist accommodation in the Canary Islands.

As a result, the executive concludes that it cannot provide a single answer on how many hotels with demolition orders exist in the archipelago and closes the procedure.

Legal experts accuse the Government of opacity

For Irma Ferrer, a renowned lawyer specialising in urban planning transparency, the Canary Islands Government is opaque for keeping this information hidden. The lawyer believes that, in the century and the era in which we live, it cannot be said that this is difficult information to obtain. She argues that this opacity surrounding procedures prevents society from holding public authorities to account, generating profound mistrust.

“But I have enough experience to know that wherever information is hidden, it is because corruption really is running rampant,” Ferrer stresses.

Eugenio Reyes, spokesperson for Ben Magec Ecologistas en Acción, meanwhile considers it deeply regrettable that the regional executive does not have an up-to-date list in this regard, and criticises its negligence in taking so many years to enforce demolition rulings.

Official statistics reveal scale of the problem

The Canary Islands Agency for the Protection of the Natural Environment (ACPMN) is the body responsible in the Canaries for restoring urban planning legality. However, official statistics reveal that, of the 58,107 environmental infringements recorded in the Islands between 2001 and 2025, legality has been restored in only 4,211 cases. That is just 7.2% of the total.

Canarias Ahora asked the Ministry of Territorial Policy, Territorial Cohesion and Water, on which the ACPMN depends, what reasons explain the Government’s delay in enforcing demolition rulings for hotels or tourist establishments. Sources from the department headed by Manuel Miranda (CC) replied that they believed the matter fell to Costas, but have not provided further information as of the publication date of this article.

Hotels still operating despite demolition orders

An approximate list of hotels that remain operational despite having a demolition order includes the Papagayo Arena and Son Bou, in Lanzarote; the Oliva Beach, part of the RIU chain, in Fuerteventura; and the San Agustín Beach Club, in Gran Canaria. Reyes believes there are several more, although he does not recall which ones.

Ferrer, for her part, laments the administration’s double standards when it comes to the powerful and the vulnerable. “We have seen in recent years in the Canaries how shacks, private homes and home extensions are demolished. But when it comes to demolishing tourist infrastructure, there we have a justice system that is tremendously harsh on the poor and tremendously cowardly towards the powerful,” reflects the lawyer from Transparency in Urban Planning.

Ferrer says that tourism is the economic engine of the Islands and that, as a result, there is a large swathe of the population, judges, prosecutors and magistrates who consider that the economic engine of the Canaries is hotels. This means that demolishing one of them weighs heavily on those who have to enforce such a decision.

The lawyer also points out that, after it emerged earlier this year that the ACPMN had failed to claim environmental fines worth almost 15 million euros, you would have to be very foolish or very trusting not to conclude that there is clear collusion between the business sector committing the infringements and the Canary Islands Government.

That collusion, Ferrer concludes, which is documented and proven, is what the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) calls “the developer’s urbanism”.

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