Torreblanca Doña Blanca Golf project - Twelve years waiting and still no further forward

Torreblanca Council finds itself in a legal dilemma after the winning company of the PAI for the Doña Blanca Golf, Urbanizadora Torremar, suggested that it should relinquish its position as agent developer and no agreement could be reached between the political parties.

Mayor, Juan Manuel Peraire, called a meeting of local businessmen and traders, together with the opposition parties (PSOE and BLOC) in the Town Library to explain the situation to them regarding the golf course project.  It has been 12 years in the process and could now be facing another delay.

The scenario put forward by the mayor can be summed up as follows.  After a long wait, the construction of the project was awarded a year ago to the Renos Pavasal company, who did not start the work, requesting through the developer that the project be suspended for two years with a year’s extension.  This was completely rejected at a council meeting.

There were then requests for the guarantee to be reduced, and partially refunded.  This also was rejected by the Council.

Further allegations and disputes arose, and it looked as if the Torreblanca Council might itself take on the role of Development Agent and directly manage the work to be carried out or that the tender be re-opened so that new companies could choose to take part in a new tendering process.  Then Urbanizadora Torremar broke their silence and suggested to the council that there should be a negotiated exit from the situation, with a proposal to Torreblanca Council which principally put forward four points.

First, that Urbanizadora Torremar, on its own initiative, should give up the role of development agent, without entering into any judicial process.  Both parties would withdraw the various legal disputes which had crossed each other throughout the proceedings.  The company would cede title to the 600,000 sq. metres of land in the PAI to the Torreblanca Council and finally the company would deliver a million euros as compensation to those owners affected by the PAI to cover the possible financial damages which might arise from suspending the PAI.

In view of this situation, the mayor recognised that the first move would be to inform the opposition groups of the company’s suggestions, opening it “to any proposal to reach a unanimous outcome”.  After some months, at the end of December 2013 the PSOE did not want to approve the company’s proposal, whilst the BLOC preferred to suspend the whole process and start it again when times were better.

The Governing Team could not agree with either of these proposals.  In this situation Juan Manuel Peraire chose to put the problem to the town, or at least to the local businessmen and traders.  According to the Council, there are pros and cons to be taken into account when making a decision.  The first is that the company and the council are in the middle of a litigious case regarding the guarantees, which could go on for up to ten years.  Based on extrapolating an earlier case against Augimar, demanding that they carry out the execution of sports facilities which they had promised when they were awarded the project in Sector 3 in Torrenostra, litigation for an amount of 400,000 euros took two and a half years to be resolved in favour of the Council.  The dispute over the guarantees with Urbanizadora Torremar, which in the best case might obtain 8 million euros and in the worst case little more than two million euros, could go on sine die.  This would result in the blocking of any possible construction of the golf course in the immediate future.

The other option is to accept the company’s proposal and to count on a margin of manoeuvrability in order to hold another tender or for the Torreblanca Council to carry the PAI forward by managing it directly themselves.  This would mean starting a procedure to draw up a legal form of agreement, so that owners’ financial damages could be assessed.  According to council sources, 95% of the land is owned by companies and banks, with only 5% of the owners being Torreblanca residents.

To this has to be added the fact that Urbanizadora Torremar is in discussion with its creditors regarding bankruptcy protection or administration, so that the whole process would be supervised by an Administrator appointed by the judge.

Currently interested owners can obtain information about their particular situation from the Torreblanca Council Town Planning Department offices and express their opinion in a document which has been prepared for this purpose.

As there were no other conclusions, the meeting ended with a squabble between the political groups present, which provoked the majority of those at the meeting to leave it, in many cases without understanding why it had been called.