The City Council files a constitutional appeal before the High Court, alleging a violation of the right to effective judicial protection without suffering a denial of due process
Benidorm City Council asks the Constitutional Court to temporarily suspend the High Court ruling on APR-7 while it studies its annulment
The City Council also points out that, without regional or state funding, the project could lead to the technical bankruptcy of the municipal treasury.
The mayor states that, if the worst-case scenario is confirmed, "this is the only government capable of turning the situation around."
Benidorm City Council has requested the Constitutional Court to suspend the execution of Judgment 343 of May 23, 2024, issued by the First Section of the Administrative Litigation Division of the High Court of Justice of the Valencian Community regarding the APR-7 of Serra Gelada, as well as to annul it, ordering the retroactive action so that a new judgment can be issued. This is stated in the appeal for protection that the City Council has filed with the high court against the latest ruling by the Supreme Court of Justice, dated June 5, which dismissed the nullity motion filed by the City Council against said judgment, which obliges it to pay €283 million plus corresponding legal interest to several owners for the urban development of those lands.
The Mayor of Benidorm, Toni Pérez, publicly announced this Monday all the details of this appeal for protection, which aims to "continue defending the general interest of all citizens, following the steps taken at each step by municipal technicians and those working for the City Council in this dispute." The mayor explained that the appeal for protection was filed last Thursday, July 31, before the Constitutional Court and that the following day, on Friday, August 1, the City Council's groups were informed of it, as a preliminary step to its inclusion on the agenda of the information committees held this morning.
Pérez also explained that, before his appearance today, he reconvened the Board of Spokespersons to provide the groups with all the reports that served as the basis for filing the appeal, "with the utmost transparency to which we are committed and which we have been practising from the outset."
The appeal for protection filed with the Constitutional Court alleges that both Judgment 343 of the High Court of Justice and the ruling of June 5th violated the fundamental right of the Benidorm City Council to effective judicial protection without being left defenseless, as enshrined in Article 24.1 of the Spanish Constitution, "in its dimension as the right to a judicial decision founded on law, not incurring patent error, manifest unreasonableness, or arbitrariness." The City Council requests that the High Court declare this fundamental right to have been violated and, therefore, to annul both judicial decisions, ordering the retroactive application of the proceedings so that the High Court may issue a new ruling respecting the aforementioned fundamental right.
Among other issues, the appeal indicates that the TSJ ruling imposes "unprecedented compensation in Spanish urban planning" based on "manifestly contradictory and inconsistent reasoning." It recognises that the owners of the land in the APR-7 have not met the requirements established by Spanish law for a landowner to be entitled to compensation, such as the transfer, equal distribution, and urbanisation of the land. It also considers that such noncompliance would not be "determinant" in obtaining such compensation.
Furthermore, while the TC resolves these requests, the appeal for protection also requests the suspension of the execution of ruling 343, since failure to do so would cause "damages that are impossible or difficult to repair." To reach this conclusion, the appeal is based on the report issued by the Municipal Comptroller's Office, which establishes, among other things, that Benidorm City Council, without state or regional funding, would enter "technical bankruptcy," which "would imply a very serious reduction in the provision of municipal public services received by the citizens of Benidorm."
In addition to putting this situation in black and white, the Municipal Comptroller's Office indicates that "adopting a partial payment schedule" for the debt, which currently amounts to €344 million, while the legal proceedings remain open would already cause serious harm to the public." Therefore, it does not support this solution since, in its opinion, "it would be essential to involve the state and regional governments to obtain some type of financing that would allow the judgment to be executed." This "has already been done by the State with other municipalities for debts not arising from court rulings, but with very similar amounts resulting from ordinary management," the mayor recalled.
The Comptroller's Office report also adds "the real difficulty of recovering the money already paid if the courts—in the lawsuits still pending at various levels, several of them favourable to the criterion defended by the City Council—finally ruled in favour of the municipal interests."
Given all this, Toni Pérez stated that "we have always been very aware of the impact of this matter and, in light of it, we are exercising all the means available to us, in the opinion of the municipal legal and economic services, to defend the general interest of Benidorm, of all present and future Benidorm residents, and also of our visitors."
The mayor concluded by reiterating, once again, his "full confidence in the justice system" and once again appealed for caution and calm: "If the worst-case scenario were to materialize, there is no doubt that this is the only government capable of working to defend the general interest and of moving forward in a situation that could not be more complex for the general interest of Benidorm."
