«End of the urban planning guide»

OPINION | Carlos Pesquera, President of the Dénia Region Tourism Promoters Association

With the ruling of the Supreme Court of July 22, 2022, one of the many adventures in the urban planning of Dénia was closed, that of the transitional urban planning regulations, also known as NUT of 2018. Two months later, the governing team of the Dénia City Council had the very illustrious idea of ​​​​approving a guide for processing urban planning licenses subordinate to a General Structural Plan still in process, which on the other hand, already anticipated urban planning parameters more typical of a detailed one, and which still is not and is not
waiting.

New construction on the outskirts of Dénia

Faced with such unprecedented bossism, the Generalitat Valenciana, confirming the opinion of this Association, forcefully urged the city council to stop violating good law, calling the infamous guide a "trompe l'oeil." But Dénia's urban planning department ignored it, and the political leadership of the regional government, in the run-up to regional and municipal elections, became involved as an accomplice in the name of solidarity among colleagues and incomprehensibly ignored the report from the Generalitat's legal profession.

The Dénia Region Tourism Promoters Association could not remain on the sidelines of so much nonsense, pernicious to the more than just public interest, the fruit of a despotism as unenlightened as the discredit of its actors. It wouldn't be necessary to make a list for us all to remember the same botched jobs that the governing team, in its usual hubbub, wants us to look at with submissive eyes, filled with false enthusiasm. Therefore, two months after the approval of the guide, this Association filed an administrative appeal against its
application.

After a precautionary suspension and its lifting months later, a ruling has finally been issued, this time for a supervening cause: the approval at the last minute of the elections of a General State Budget (GE) that has once again mutated into its fraudulent and erratic nature.

This ruling, far from falling on deaf ears, allows things to be put back in their place, leaving the guide for processing urban planning licenses in definitive oblivion, with the City Council being obliged to process all those files between the fall of the NUT and the validity of the PGE, with full and exclusive respect for article 70.4 of the TR of the LOTUP, "In the absence of planning, new constructions must harmonize in the basics with the environment in which they are located. To this end, the licenses must be accompanied in all cases with a study of
landscape integration».

As a final observation, it would not have been necessary to transcribe the previous legal provision verbatim, were it not for the likelihood that we will soon return to the same urban planning situation of lamentable lack of planning, and not because of the sincere wish of the person who presents it, but because another ruling is approaching, and as we know, in Dénia everything related to urban planning is likely to worsen.