ARCHIVED - Additional court ruling is final blow for Marina de Cope project

This makes it impossible for the development to go ahead in its proposed format

Ecologists are cautiously triumphant following a ruling which makes it increasingly difficult for those wishing to build a vast leisure and sporting complex at Marina de Cope near to Águilas to do so.

The ruling means that the existing plans are now totally unworkable and that the project must now undergo a compete rethink if it is to go ahead in some format, a task complicated by the necessity for the councils of both Águilas and Lorca to re-work their own municipal land plans, the current situation in the construction sector and the opposition of ecological groups to the construction of any development in this stretch of unspoilt coastline.

This latest court ruling, this time by the Administrative Litigation Division of the Superior Court of Justice of Murcia (TSJ), cancels the Declaración de Interés Regional de Marina de Cope( AIR – a declaration of regional interest ) made by the regional government in August 2004 "for not complying with the law", upholding a complaint made against the AIR by a protest group formed by ecological groups and opposition politicians.

It’s a vastly complicated topic, but basically the regional government changed the boundaries of land which was protected as regional parkland according to legislation passed in 1992, and reclassified it as being of regional interest in 2004, as the building boom along the Spanish coastline was reaching its peak.

This statement of regional interest then enabled the regional government to promote the construction of a large urban resort between Lorca and Aguilas in an area of over 2,000 acres, which included the construction of 9,000 homes, twenty hotels, six golf courses and 1,400 inland marina berths, a project which the regional government believed to be of key importance to the economic development of the region and the ecologists opposed wholeheartedly .

Last autumn the Constitutional courts finally ruled that the land must return to the same status it held in 1992, before the Regional Land Act which reclassified it had been passed, which effectively means that it now can´t be built on, and as 1,661 acres of the proposed development area was affected by this ruling, makes the construction of the proposed development in its current form impossible.

The ecological association who have fought this development for so many years say that the sentence passed this week “clearly shows that the regional government was wrong and that they “should put an end to their urban madness, “ as it is clear that “ it is not viable to carry on along the same path.”

“We are delighted, after 10 years of battle”, they said, a sentiment echoed by Pedro García of ANSE who remarked that this latest court ruling “offered a marvellous opportunity for the region to focus on the future of the coast in a different fashion. “

He asserted that the regional government had “pushed for construction in a determined, blind and irrational fashion, “and that the government now had a chance to rectify its errors, “as it has been proven that their policy was true madness”.

This is a major blow for the regional government, who have vocally and publicly put this project forward as one of their key development projects for the growth of tourism within the region, along with the Paramount Park at Alhama de Murcia and the Portmán Bay residential development.
Yesterday President Valcárcel made it clear that he is not ready to roll over and give up on one of his star projects, and insisted that the development could still go ahead, albeit with a modified plan, the court ruling, “did not mean an end to the project.”

He affirmed that the sentence did not say that the development could not be built, but that a clarification of its boundaries would be necessary and that the plans would have to be revised taking into account the new area of the protected land.