Another project by Madrid Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida fails in court. This time, the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid declared “void” part of a special project that it had approved in October last year – with the favorable vote of Vox – to transfer 205,000 meters of public land to Atlético de Madrid after an individual appealed against this project. Madrid City Hall, as defendant, and Atlético de Madrid, as co-defendant, have 30 days to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The field is that which surrounds the Metropolitan stadium. Built to host the Olympic Games which ultimately did not take place, it consisted of three plots and it was precisely in the transfer of one of them that the problems with justice arose. Where the ruins of the aquatic center where Olympic athletes went to participate in events such as swimming or water polo are currently located, Enrique Cerezo’s club had planned a hotel and a concert hall and the Almeida City Council had approved the project. According to the judgment, this “represents a radical transformation of the public purpose of the land, since it allows its use for activities of a lucrative and private nature without memory sufficiently motivating this modification”.
Another of the arguments put forward by the TSJM to cancel the project is that the Town Hall failed to carry out an environmental impact study. “It should have been subject to strategic environmental assessment in some of the ways provided for in the said implementing regulations,” explains the judge.
However, he denies that there was a “misuse of power” on the part of the municipal council, as the prosecution alleges. “Its objective is not to satisfy the public interest but rather the private interest, in particular that of the co-defendant, Club Atlético de Madrid,” argued the author of the appeal. “This Chamber does not appreciate the existence of sufficient evidence,” the Court responds to this question.
“This is exactly what we announced was going to happen,” criticizes socialist councilor Antonio Giraldo. “This is what happens when town planning is done à la carte. When the interest is not the general interest, but rather the benefit of certain particular interests,” he adds.
The City Hall and Atlético de Madrid have two options to carry out the project. The first is to appeal to the Supreme Court, but this is not a short route. The High Court will take “at least a year” to accept it, judicial sources explain.
The second option is that Almeida presents a new special plan like the one he presented to Cibeles a year ago and corrects the aspects that Justice considers abusive and contrary to the public interest. “This is what happens when urban planning is done à la carte. When the interest is not the general interest, but rather that of benefiting certain particular interests, like in this case Atlético de Madrid,” he concluded.
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