Ten years after its approval, the reform of the Coastal Law of the Government of Mariano Rajoy in 2013 continues without connecting the dots. Dozens of industrial facilities and constructions on the coast await the fine print of Ence's ruling to finally clarify their situation while the European Commission has just opened an infringement procedure against Spain for extending the concessions for 75 years without sufficient transparency.
"We already gave the PP feasible solutions, but they ignored it," says Carmen del Amo, president of the Platform for People Affected by the Coastal Law, which denounces the "defenselessness" of hundreds of concessions by the sea and criticizes governments of all colors by successive legal "patches".
The 1988 Coastal Law gave a 30-year extension to concessions in the maritime-terrestrial public domain. In 2018 the terms expired and, to avoid the effects on industries and homes, the Rajoy Government approved a reform in 2013 that allowed the concessions to be extended by 75 years. The current Executive has also launched its own law, in which it specifies that the 75 years apply from construction and not from 2013, but without retroactive character, so that the extensions of concessions approved in the Rajoy stage come out unscathed.
Solved case? Absolutely. The clearest example is Ence's Galician pulp mill, which received the extension, but later found itself in a legal battle that was on the verge of derailing it. The National Court annulled the extension because, as established in the 2013 reform, the non-existence of an alternative location was not justified. However, the Supreme Court, with the same law on the table, has said that the criteria must be different: a favorable environmental report is enough.
"The interpretation of the 2013 reform is that the courts are in favor of extending as long as there is no impact on the environment," explains Francisco Javier García Martínez, the Garrigues partner who has defended the Ence works council.
This is the key point, but the Supreme Court has yet to draft the sentence, in which it has been asked to establish doctrine on other issues and finally clarify what happens with the extensions of the previous government that ran aground in the courts.
The Supreme Court ruling on Ence has thousands of people on edge. For now, the court has announced that the concession of an urbanization in Alicante, since it does not have an environmental report, is not valid, which puts the houses on the ropes. "How is an urbanization going to have an environmental report?", they complain to the association of those affected. There are many cases that have gotten rid of the problem because no one has prosecuted them, as is the case with the restaurants on the Malvarrosa beach in Valencia.
How many facilities does the mess affect? The current State lawyers asked the Supreme Court to use the Ence case to establish doctrine after assuring that "25 extensions have been granted for expressly prohibited uses and another 27 for uses that need to justify their location in the public domain, pending resolution of 285 extensions for housing uses”.
In the industrial sphere, the problems are concentrated on the Cantabrian coast. There is a case modeled on that of Ence, that of the old Pontesa, which will foreseeably go well if the Supreme Court's criteria are confirmed. The same will happen with the Galician canneries. It remains to be seen how the new criteria affects other types of facilities. Sources from the Ministry of Ecological Transition estimate that 23 residential buildings and five hotels may be affected, but they do not specify their location because the resolutions are not public.
Added to all this is the recent decision of the European Commission to open a file to Spain for extending the concessions in 2013 for up to 75 years. Ence, which is still celebrating the survival of the Galician factory, had to react to indicate that this sanction would be paid by the State and would not affect the owners of the concessions.
