The Supreme Court (TSJ) has ruled that Calp Town Council must pay 116,280 euros for the expropriation of the Ràfol plot of land, as opposed to the 2.3 million euros requested by the owners. The Supreme Court considers that this plot is on rural land, as defended by the City Council, contrary to the criteria of the owners, who maintain that it is urban land.
The Mayor of Calp, Ana Sala, has described this ruling as "very positive" for the municipal coffers. "It is with great satisfaction that I pass this sentence. "We have defended the community's interests. We have saved more than two million euros," she said. And she welcomed the fact that the 15,500 square metre plot of land is already municipal property, which should be used for infrastructure, as stipulated in the ruling.
This puts an end to more than ten years of legal dispute between the city council and the owners, which began in 2009 when the owners denounced the council for illegally occupying their land and the city was ordered to pay almost one million euros.
From that moment on, the City Council initiated an expropriation procedure in which each party set a different value for the land: the City Council estimated it at 53,000 euros, while the owners estimated it at 2,900,000 euros. The provincial expropriation court ruled that the value of the land was 95,000 euros, which, together with the interest, amounted to 121,000 euros, which the city council had already advanced to the owners. However, as the owners were not satisfied with the decision, they appealed and reduced their application to 2,300,000 euros.
Now the Supreme Court has ruled that neither of the parties is right, although it has set the amount of the expropriation at 116,280 euros, to which interest is added, so that the City Council only has to pay 21,000 euros: the difference to what it has already paid to the landowners.