The Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJCV) releases the Alicante City Council from paying compensation of more than 477,000 euro for the demolition of six illegally built single-family homes on the island of Tabarca.
Not only that. In its ruling, the regional high court exonerated the local administration from all responsibility in this regard, considering, first, that it was the then Ministry of Public Works who granted the initial authorisation for the construction of these homes, and, second, that the promoters of those villas continued with their construction knowing that the TSJ had already agreed to the suspension of that permit and had ordered the work to stop.
Thus, the ruling dismisses the appeal filed by the owners of these homes against the first instance ruling agreed by the Contentious Court number 3 of Alicante in January 2020. In that first resolution, the court rejected the request for financial responsibility raised by the appellants upon concluding that the term for the filing of that claim expired in 2010, one year after the Supreme Court (TS) confirmed the previous ruling of the TSJ annulling the authorisation of the houses, while the claim for compensation was registered in December 2016.
But, in addition, that judgment of the Contentious Court also concluded that compensation could not be demanded from the City Council since the licences that were cancelled were not the municipal work permits, but the authorisation provided by the autonomous department.
The TSJ now ratifies that decision by confirming the extemporaneous nature of the registration of the economic claim and stresses, likewise, that it is not appropriate for the City Council to compensate a damage that it did not generate, but was caused by the promoters of the properties themselves by maintaining the development of the housing works knowing that their licence had been revoked since the chalets in question occupied a protection zone of the maritime-terrestrial public domain.
This was confirmed in the judgment handed down by the TSJ in 2003, which annulled the authorisation for the construction of said houses granted by the Department of Public Works and Transport of the Generalitat Valenciana, which -as has been said- was confirmed by the Supreme Court (TS) in 2009.
In this sense, the high regional court points out that the owners of the houses have already processed a legal action for a property claim against the Ministry that was dismissed in a sentence dated in 2016. And it also points out now that it cannot be expected to demand compensation from the City Council because their authorisations (the major work licence, from 1998, and the first occupation licence, from 2015) were not expressly revoked.
What’s more, regardless of this, it was the promoters who should have stopped the construction of the chalets when they learned that the TSJ had agreed in 2000 to suspend the authorisation granted by the Ministry a year earlier. And that, with that decision, the execution of the works was also suspended, as was reflected in the aforementioned sentence, issued by the TSJ itself in 2016.
In this way, its latest judgment regarding the claim directed against the City Council, indicates that the appellants “were aware of the suspension of the works and continued with the execution despite the suspension and stoppage order issued, and the Decree of the Consell prohibiting any construction that affects the public domain and suspending the licences that affect it”.
