The Provincial Court of Palma continues to advance in the trial for the disallowance of the dismountable beach bar in Cala Gració, a process in which it is investigated whether the then mayor of Sant Antoni, José Tur Cires, and the councilor of Urbanism, Cristina María Ribas, incurred in a crime of prevarication.
The prosecution and defense have requested his acquittal, while the private prosecution maintains its request for disqualification.
An administrative procedure in question
The former municipal secretary in 2018 has appeared as a witness and has questioned the process that led to the disallowance of the beach bar. According to his statement, the decision of the City Council did not follow the established legal channels, such as the ex officio review of the license or the declaration of lesivity.
“Here there was no clear procedure. The license was granted and, upon seeing the problem and the protests, they wanted to backtrack without following the proper administrative procedures,” he said. In addition, he explained that, instead of using the relevant legal mechanisms, the Consistory requested several technical reports outside the regulated procedure to justify the stoppage.
According to the witness, the initial authorization of the beach bar had been issued correctly and only lacked the certificate of completion of work for its opening. Likewise, he has assured that the Demarcation of Coasts of the Balearic Islands endorsed the installation and did not incur in any defect in its resolution of 2017.
Differences in the documentation and position of technicians
On Tuesday, the municipal architect who prepared one of the reports used to disallow the beach bar also testified. According to her testimony, the project presented by the company presented discrepancies between the version sent to Costas and the one delivered to the City Council, which would have generated doubts about its viability.
The engineer responsible for the project, for his part, has defended that the permits obtained were correct both for the installation and for the work, which he has described as “very simple and without fixed foundations”. In addition, he pointed out that the Consistory never gave the company the opportunity to correct the alleged deficiencies before taking the decision to stop the activity.
A chronology of changes in criteria
The origin of the conflict dates back to May 2018, when the Department of Urbanism of Sant Antoni issued a decree that prevented the start of activity of the chiringuito, despite the fact that its installation had previously been authorized.
This decree came after the Municipal Government Board approved the permit in April of the same year, supported by the 2017 resolution of Costas, which endorsed the occupation of the maritime-terrestrial public domain with a removable structure for four years.
However, the City Council justified its change of position in the technical reports that warned of irregularities in the project and its possible non-compliance with urban planning regulations.
Prosecutor’s Office sees no crime in the municipal decision
Despite the irregularities in the procedure, the Public Prosecutor’s Office maintains that there is no evidence that the actions of the former mayor and the former councilor of Urbanism responded to the intention of harming the concessionaire company. In its brief of provisional conclusions, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has pointed out that the change of criterion cannot be considered an arbitrary or unfair decision, for which reason it has requested the acquittal of the defendants.
For its part, the private prosecution maintains its position that the paralyzation of the beach bar occurred irregularly and asks that Tur and Ribas be disqualified for prevarication.
