Marbella town hall to take the long-running Puerto Banús terrace dispute to Spain's Supreme Court

The long-running dispute over the street terraces in Puerto Banús stays in the courts. As confirmed to SUR by municipal sources, Marbella town hall will now appeal to the Supreme Court against the ruling from the high court of justice in Andalucía (TSJA), in which it orders the council to "initiate the administrative process to legalise the corresponding area designated for access roads and currently occupied by the terraces".

The municipal legal services are already studying the case and must lodge the appeal before year end, given that the deadline is 30 days from the date of notification of the court ruling. In this way, Marbella council will defend maintaining the status quo of these spaces and will not set in motion the administrative process to legalise the streets where the terraces are located if the ruling does not become final, either through a ruling made along the same lines or through the dismissal of the appeal.

The TSJA is the highest court to have ruled on this case to date, which has seen contradictory rulings from lower courts and the provincial court of Malaga. The TSJA maintains there has already been "a tacit acceptance" of the roads by the town hall and that it must comply with a plenary agreement of 11 July 1996. That original agreement approved the initiation of proceedings to "legalise the area" and also stipulated that "the roads of Puerto Banús are for public use and ownership", as well as ordering the removal of the barriers that, until then, had impeded their use. The legality of this decision has the force of a final judgement after it was taken to the Supreme Court by Puerto Banús SA, the company that operates the iconic marina.

According to the company, "the ruling merely compels the town hall to initiate the necessary procedures to legalise the area designated for access roads, but currently occupied by the terraces", but "without prejudicing its definitive legal status", or the "existing rights", as these are issues that "are expressly excluded from the current judicial pronouncement". Puerto Banús SA points out that these "questions surrounding ownership must be discussed and resolved within the administrative procedure that needs to start now".

"The ruling only restores procedural legality and guarantees that proceedings will continue, in which, with full opportunity for both parties to present opposing arguments, the ownership, the legal nature of the land and the existing rights can be analysed in due course - issues that are expressly excluded from the current judicial pronouncement", adds the company.

Puerto Banús SA stresses that the TSJA "upheld the appeal for administrative inefficiency", taking the view that the town hall should have already initiated the proceedings to make the access roads municipal assets.

BGI Law, the firm that represented the business traders, are "very satisfied" with a ruling they describe as "of enormous importance, as it would put an end to the conflict that many traders have maintained with Puerto Banús SA regarding the fees charged for the use of the terraces", arguing for years that these are municipal access roads. According to the law firm, "the ruling strengthens the notion that the roads are public property and that, therefore, it should be the town hall, not Puerto Banús SA, that charges for their use".

BGI Law points out that the court ruling "is fundamentally based on the validity" of the 1996 plenary agreement that declared the roads "public" and also agreed to initiate the legalisation process. These lawyers further stress that this decision by Marbella council way back in '96 was already upheld by the Supreme Court.