Spain and Portugal for Visitors

Posted by : John Ross on Nov 17, 2005 - 12:25 PM environment

Thirty Greenpeace campaigners have occupied a hotel under construction in the Cabo de Gata nature reserve in Almería. The squatters made their move at 07.30 am on November 16, 2005. The ecological organization maintains that the 20-storey, 411-room hotel is illegal under the 1988 Spanish Ley de Costas, Coastal Law, which specifically prohibits building within 100 metres of the shoreline. The hotel, a typically Spanish monstrosity being built by a shadowy company called Azata, is intended to be the first of a complex of eight hotels, 1,500 apartments and, naturally, a golf course. Read on for more of this story, send your protest to the Regional Government of Andalusia, or visit the Cabo de Gata.

According to Greenpeace Spain's website, "This hotel is the symbol of the destruction of the coasts. None of the authorities involved has replied to the affirmations that both Greenpeace and other groups have made that the project is illegal. We are not going to tolerate the complicit silence of the authorities and we shall not stop until the law and respect for the envirionment prevail," declared María José Caballero, head of Greenpeace's Ocean Campaign, from the threatened Algarrobico Beach. The authorities referred to are the Junta de Andalucía, the Ayuntamiento (town council) of Carboneras (the borough in question) and the Spanish Environment Ministry, particularly in the form of the Dirección General de Costas, Coastal Directorate.

The ecologists have spread a 168-square-metre banner demanding the hotel's "DEMOLICIÓN" over the façade of the hotel, and hung others proclaiming that the building is an "HOTEL ILEGAL." More playfully, Greenpeace climbers have hung a Greenpeace logo from one of the construction cranes, and two launches with "HOTEL ILEGAL DEMOLICIÓN" banners are parked in the sea in front of the hotel.