The Contentious Administrative Court number 3 of Palma has issued an order in which, taking into account the documentation provided by the Sant Antoni City Council, considers the sentence that obliged the municipal administration to process the closure of the illegal parking at ses Variades and others located in the urban nucleus as “adequately executed”. Although hundreds of vehicles continue to park daily in the extensive land of ses Variades, the judge understands that the Consistory has complied with the court order that obliged it, as it now states, to “put an end to the existence of plots of land where the established illegal parking takes place”.

Vehículos Estacionados, Ayer, En Ses Variades. | J. A. Riera Vehicles in the illegal parking area, yesterday, in ses Variades. | J. A. RIERA

“The report prepared by the City Council states that it has proceeded to terminate the contracts it had with the owners of the plots where the park-and-ride lots were located, which is in accordance with the ruling of the sentence,” justifies the judge in the order.

Paradoxically, the sentence condemned the City Council to “the initiation of proceedings for the closure of the illegal parking lots that do not comply with municipal and activity regulations”, a procedure that the Consistory has not carried out, as well as the payment of compensation for the damage caused to Subsuelos Urbanos, the former concessionaire of the underground parking lot on Avenida de España, which was the who originally reported the situation.

The agreements and the IBI for the illegal parking area

Among other things, the Consistory justified in court the compliance with the sentence in the extinction of the agreement with the property of ses Variades, by which the latter ceded the use of its land as parking and, in return, the Consistory exempted him from paying the Real Estate Tax (IBI), while the land is now declassified.

The Consistory defends that the land of ses Variades does not disuade parking, but actually in reality it has never ceased to function as such, since September 2018 when the property (something more than 80% of which belongs to the Matutes family) communicated the resolution of the agreement of transfer of the land and the recovery of its possession to the City Council. That is to say, it was not the City Council that, through the court order (of March 3rd of last year), resolved the agreement, but the property did it two and a half years earlier. Despite this, the Policía Local did not remove the parking signs, the separating sleepers and the bollards delimiting the parking lanes until December last year, more than three years after the property regained possession of its land.