The long-standing battle over the land in El Veril, San Bartolomé de Tirajana, has taken an administrative turn with unforeseen consequences for the Kiessling family's holding company. The environmental group Turcón-Ecologistas en Acción has taken the conflict directly to the Directorate General of State Assets, demanding that the Ministry of Finance intervene in the proceedings. Their argument is compelling: the State is the legitimate owner of approximately 70% of the land where the Loro Parque Group plans to build the Gran Canaria version of Siam Park, a majority ownership status that, according to the complainants, has been ignored in the permitting process.
Turcón's offensive focuses on the public domain nature of the land, a boundary firmly established three decades ago which, in his view, invalidates any claims of private ownership over the ravine. By appealing to the Treasury, the environmentalists seek to have Madrid act as the "ultimate guardian" of a heritage belonging to the public, demanding the immediate suspension or review of the authorizations granted by the City Council and the Island Council. For Wolfgang Kiessling's project, this move represents a new obstacle in a seemingly endless bureaucratic race, just as the Second Modernization Plan was attempting to clear the regulatory path.
Beyond the issue of land ownership, the document of objections—more than 30 pages long—introduces a risk factor that strikes at the heart of any business license: safety. Turcón warns that channeling the ravine to accommodate the water park is an "invitation to disaster." In the context of the climate crisis, environmentalists denounce the occupation of a natural waterway for an activity intended to attract massive crowds as a reckless act that ignores the state's flood risk maps.
This warning regarding the occupation of public water resources calls into question the validity of the sector-specific permits already granted. Turcón urges the State Heritage Department to assess whether the transformation of the ravine is compatible with the protection of waterways, suggesting that the Canary Islands administrations have applied a "perverse classification" of the territory to favor private investment over the general interest and the physical safety of future users.
For the tourism sector in southern Gran Canaria, Turcón's intervention with the Ministry of Finance adds a layer of legal uncertainty to an investment considered strategic for the destination's competitiveness. If the State decides to formally appear as the owner of the affected land, the validity of the Modernization Plan (PMM) would be called into question, forcing the restart of procedures or the negotiation of public land concessions that were not previously under consideration by the Loro Parque Group.
The request to return the file to the Environmental Authority marks a point of no return in the environmentalist strategy, which now relies on Madrid's "technical neutrality" to halt the construction. While the municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana continues to wait for what would be one of the largest water parks in Europe, the land in El Veril has become a legal battleground where public ownership and climate risks threaten to definitively sink the foundation stone of the Kiessling family's dream in Gran Canaria.
