The Costa Escanellas family, through the company Grup Empresarial Paya, SL, joined at the end of last year, the shareholders of Hotel Flor de Sal & Spa, a company founded by the controversial businessman Angel Bustos to buy two plots of land for tourist use located in a pine forest in es Pujols with the aim of reselling them to the highest bidder for 22 million euros or for 50 million euros with the hotel built.
The operation, according to the registry documentation in possession of La Voz de Ibiza, was formalized on December 14, 2023. Hotel Flor de Sal & Spa, SL increased its share capital by 50,000 euros, at the rate of 50,000 new shares with a nominal value of one euro. Indeisla, the company of Bustos which is the administrator of Apartamentos Castaví SA and Paraíso de los Pinos SA, subscribed 35,000 of the new shares; Geinpa, 2,500 and; Grup Empresarial Paya, the remaining 12,500. These two companies were beneficiaries, as well as five others, of the changes introduced in the contest under suspicion to be awarded two beach bars in es Pujols.
Paya Hotels: 23.58% of shares
Thus, according to the calculations of La Voz de Ibiza based on the available registry information, the Paya family came to have 23.58% of the shares of the company; Geinpa, whose administrator is David Rozalén Morales, 4.72%; and the rest remained in the hands of the Bustos family. The recomposition of the shareholding came a few months after the Bustos family bought the plots of land from the family that owns the La Palmera Apartments.
The transaction was formalized on December 18, 2023.
Apartamentos La Palmera, through various companies, appears as the promoter of the EPJ-06 Unit of Action with which the area of the tourist nucleus of es Pujols has been divided into plots.
Suspicious changes in urban planning figures
The still president of the Consell de Formentera, Llorenç Córdoba, referred to “suspicious changes in urban planning figures” agreed last term.
He was referring to this operation. However, it is not part of the documentation delivered to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office as part of the operation against “systemic corruption” that, in his opinion, would prevail in Formentera between Sa Unió, GxF, PSOE and some officials and businessmen.
As has been revealed exclusively and alone, as has happened with the contest under suspicion and the express license to the restaurant Caminito, La Voz de Ibiza, the Study of Detail approved under the presidency of the socialist Ana Juan in June 2022 introduced substantial changes with respect to the tab included in the Subsidiary Standards.
More surface area and fewer trees
The most important and of greatest impact is the authorization of an increase in the authorized surface area, from 20% to 35%, an increase of 60% to the detriment of the private free area. This change involves the construction of four buildings, in two sets of two linked by a footbridge, instead of the two originally planned.
This is a “legal trick”, as the project maintains the urban planning parameters, since the additional buildable area incorporated into the project does not actually compute for urban planning purposes. The consequence of the change is that the luxury resort of 174 places projected will have, if it achieves tourist places and it is finally executed, “wide terraces without increasing the maximum authorized use”, according to the report . According to an expert in urban planning consulted by La Voz de Ibiza, “a study of detail cannot modify building and volumes, but it can alter the surface. In this way they gain more buildable surface without being computed. This gives more value to the building, but within the legal parameters”.
The surrealistic justification
The most surprising aspect of the approved study of detail is the surrealistic justification for the increase in surface area and the change of location of the four projected buildings as opposed to the two foreseen in the Subsidiary Standards.
In spite of the fact that the report admits that the changes will mean cutting down 56 trees to 124, the developers state without blushing that “one of the objectives of this Detailed Study is to minimize the felling of trees, distributing the resulting buildability in the following areas 4 smaller buildings, strategically located in areas of lower density or smaller trees”. To counteract the logging, the developers commit to repopulate the pine forest with 246 new units.
Juan Manuel Costa Escanellas ‘Paya’.
The former mayor of Formentera and former president of the PP of Formentera, Juan Manuel Costa Escanellas Paya, also ousted through a motion of censure in 2005, at which time he uttered the historic phrase “we will return” and which did not become a reality until the victory of the candidacy led by Llorenç Córdoba in May 2023, is, in some way, the protagonist of both files.
In addition to being a shareholder, through the family business, of the company that is trying to make a killing by buying two plots and reselling them without doing anything more expensive than the aforementioned hotel in es Pujols, the president of the Hotel Association of Formentera is also a joint administrator and shareholder of the company Nimbus Formentera, SL.
Express license void
This company, majority owned by the family of the founder of the Pacha Group, Ricardo Urgell, was the beneficiary of the express license with which the property of the former Caminito restaurant, owned by the family of the general secretary of Gent per Formentera, is incorporated into the law. According to experts consulted by La Voz de Ibiza it is a null license to breach, at least, the Urban Planning Law of the Balearic Islands and the Law of Activities, since it was authorized a basic project that does not comply with the heights and a project of activities for the use of restaurant with entertainment that is not allowed with the prescription that they were modified in the executive phase. The license was granted by Sa Unió behind the back of the president of the Consell. Neither Sa Unió, nor Gent per Formentera nor PSOE, nor the rest of the media of Ibiza and Formentera have said a single word about any of the two operations unveiled by La Voz de Ibiza.
