Greenpeace slates Junta for Cabo de Gata-Nijar national park hotel decision

GREENPEACE issued a lengthy statement lamenting Junta permission to build a hotel in the Cabo de Gata-Nijar national park.
Following reports in the national media on January 20 that the 30-room hotel with parking for 70 vehicles near the Los Genoveses beach could go ahead, the environmentalist association immediately called on the Junta to backtrack.
The project, Greenpeace pointed out, completely contradicted Andalucia policies that the regional president Juanma Moreno has described as a “green revolution.”
The proposed hotel would double the amount of the park’s overnight accommodation and increase traffic on a road not designed for it, Greenpeace said.
It would also encourage “scattered tourism,” opening the door to similar projects and setting a dangerous precedent of irregularities in Cabo de Gata, the environmentalists predicted.
The project would mean a return to the days of the Costa’s construction frenzy when environmental authorisations came under the umbrella term of “public interest,” giving priority to urban development over the environment, Greenpeace claimed.
“The Junta’s effrontery is such that it is clinging to Andalucia’s own law promoting territorial sustainability to declare that the hotel is in the public interest,” the statement continued.
“This law should be called the “All land can be developed Law,” declared Luis Berraquero, Greenpeace’s territorial delegate in Andalucia.
“It promotes deregulated urban development and the obscenity of building on rustic land,” he claimed.