After eight years of litigation and 15 rulings, the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) this summer put an end to the dispute over the Can Juncadella coastal path, in Lloret de Mar, closed to the public since 2009. The judge dismissed The last appeal presented and ratified the public ownership of this coastal path, formerly used by fishermen, of approximately two kilometers between the beaches of Cala Morisca and Canyelles. The order obliged the owner of the estate, a company linked to the former president of Kazakhstan, to allow pedestrians to pass through.
For years, an iron gate has made access impossible, and those who approached the property from the luxury villa of Can Juncadella, located in the area of ??natural interest of the Cadiretes massif. Those who did so received warnings over the public address system or from private security guards – sometimes armed and accompanied by dangerous breed dogs – not to advance. The property placed several cameras and signs in the area, still present, warning that the land is “private property” and “taking photos or videos” is strictly prohibited. Otherwise, “legal action will be taken against the person or company responsible.”
Months after that final ruling by the TSJC, which no longer admits further appeals, no response has yet been given to that judicial ruling that must recover for citizens a path that was previously public. The environmental organization SOS Lloret denounces that this path has been completely blurred and has practically disappeared.
The Lloret de Mar City Council assures that it is working to establish a short-term calendar that responds to the court ruling. “We cannot yet open the road because it has yet to be defined,” justifies the new mayor, Adrià Lamelas (PSC), who points out that the judicial resolution “recognizes the existence of a section of public domain, but does not establish a specific route.” In this sense, one of the first actions will be to design a “viable and safe path”, which must be endorsed by other higher administrations such as the Generalitat and the Ministry for the Ecological Transition.
The City Council is in contact with the property in defining this route, and the mayor promises “speed” in this process, although he does not dare to set a date for reopening the road. Environmentalists urge the City Council to recover the route of the road, which is already inventoried in the POUM. “If they get tangled up in a new route, the process will be even longer,” warns Jordi Palaudelmàs, spokesperson for SOS Lloret, who fears that the property will want to delay the opening of the road as long as possible. “The property has dedicated itself to hindering access, has no interest in reopening it and is delaying a situation that should be implemented immediately,” he warns.
The case dates back to 2009, when the Lloret de Mar City Council and the owners of the property signed an agreement according to which the owners of the luxury villa in Can Juncadella agreed to pay the total cost of the road adaptation works. roundabout between Canyelles and Morisca coves. In exchange, the Lloret de Mar City Council recognized the private ownership of another path that crossed that property, the GR92-11. It was then that the property closed the coastal path under the pretext of carrying out these improvement works. The deadline to reopen it was one year and three months. After several failed projects and seven years, in 2016 the City Council revoked that agreement for non-compliance.
Thus began a judicial battle that ended this summer with the ruling of the TSJC. A full stop to a cause that has been bogged down for years. The final point will come when the trail is definitively reopened.