The skyline of Granada remains unchanged. There will be no construction, at least for now, at the Carmen de San Agustín, owned by the millionaire emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. The Sheikh, who fell in love with the estate on one of his trips to the red city and ended up buying it for 16 million euros in 2019, has seen the idea of building a palace in front of the Alhambra fade away when it clashed, literally, with the rules of the Albaicín Plan, a neighborhood, moreover, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
On the plot, of 5,500 square meters, no new building can be planned, nor can the built-up area be increased or the layout of the gardens that make it up altered. Both the house, which dates from the 1940s and consists of 800 square meters, as well as the recreational areas full of vegetation, have level 3 protection according to the Special Plan for Protection and Interior Reform of the Albacín, which allows works of conservation and rehabilitation in the area, but its heritage value must be respected.
At first glance, it seems like a bad investment for someone who planned to build a house on his whim, but it is one of the most impressive windows in the great Granada jewel and, as a cherry on top, it has a perfect orientation to the Mecca, a fact that ended up falling in love with the emir. The setting is incomparable: the Alhambra, the Generalife, the Sierra Nevada, the Sacromonte and the upper area of the Albaicín, views of incalculable value within the reach of very few. Money has been the least of the problems for Tamim, who is swimming in abundance thanks to the exploitation of hydrocarbons and natural gas in the country he rules (he also owns the club Paris Saint-Germain, PSG, and the chain from TV Al-Jazeera, among others). He has found the real obstacle in the heritage protection rules, which tie up his aspirations and blur the outlines.
After two years of tough negotiations with the previous owners, relatives of the deceased founder of the Puleva company, Rafael Pérez-Pire, the manager obtained the land for an amount substantially lower than the initial sale price (25 million 'euros) and put the machinery to work to make his dream come true. At first, he wanted to demolish the current building to build another modern air house according to his needs, a project that was automatically denied, and then he informed that he would respect and integrate the remains into the work archaeological sites that are on the plot. But his plan doesn't quite fit.
It has been the area of Culture of the Board of Andalusia that has asked the legal representatives to provide a favorable report from Icomos (International Council of Monuments and Historic Sites of Unesco) which guarantees that any reform project that wants to be carried out carried out on the farm is respectful of the cultural heritage. El Carmen de San Agustín, which once had a convent, the remains of which are buried, as well as an old wall in the Albaicín neighborhood declared an asset of cultural interest, will remain unchanged.
It seems that the caprice of the emir of Qatar, who has a fortune of 2.5 billion euros, according to Forbes magazine, and properties spread across Europe, will cause him more than one headache.
