The usual trick: placing poorly trained parties, although experts in the price of water, in charge of the businesses and report few expenses to the masters of Madrid who, among others, are the Cotoner family which, now in 2024, are dehydrated in Maspalomas and take the future of their dolphins to Madrid waiting for a real influence that generates a sentence that prevents the demolition of a surface that has exceeded legal provisions. In the south of Gran Canaria they have never seen the Cotoners for the business since they send a CEO from Madrid to the meetings who would be related to the family. In Las Palmas the management barely has access to a petty cash for small micro-expenses since in Madrid they have tolerated for years that the management employee Pedro Cantero presents himself in the institutions as "president in the Canary Islands of the theme park group Aspro Parks" when that function is the national president of Juan Carlos Smith Morrondo.
It is the unknown for the south of Gran Canaria Cotoner family, who have the title of Marquisate of Adeje, the owners of the theme park in the south of Gran Canaria purchased in 1996 from its founders in 1978, that is, the Germans Karl Uwe Bottcher and Claudio Paulmann. It began as a botanical and ornithological park and over time it grew with new attractions, animal species, flowers and plants.
The Cotoner family entered the business of granting land concessions for industrial and service sector purposes through influence derived from their involvement in the private circle of General Franco, thanks to the education of the then-Prince Juan Carlos . Until 2021, Leisure Resources International SA, the Luxembourg-based parent company of the theme park giant Aspro, had Nicolás Cotoner, Marquis of Ariany, as a board member. Nicolás is also the sister of the Director General of the Treasury, whose family is a long-standing shareholder in the group, as reported by ElDiario.es . In 2022, José Luis Cotoner Martos, a Grandee of Spain, Marquis of Bélgida, and son of Nicolás Cotoner y Cotoner, who was a mentor to King Juan Carlos I, accepted a sentence of one and a half years in prison for tax fraud, according to El Español, edited by Pedro J. Ramírez.
In 2017, the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) declared void the decree of the Canary Islands Government that legalized in 2013 the dolphinarium built five years earlier by the Palmitos Park zoo, in the south of Gran Canaria, considering it "arbitrary" and contrary to the planning of the area. An appeal against this ruling can be made to the Supreme Court as long as the affected parties (Aspro Park or the Government of the Canary Islands, as the administration that legalized the works) provide arguments related to national or European legislation, since the last word on regional legislation lies with the Supreme Court. TSJC. And that is what has been in the news in the Canary Islands these days. According to ElDiario.es "the complex business web that they have woven for decades in Luxembourg" implies "a network that in some cases connected with firms from Cyprus, Switzerland, the tax haven of Niue, Guernsey or Madeira, and linked to companies in various sectors: leisure parks and zoos in half of Europe, real estate and hotel businesses or mines in Peru."
The owners of Palmitos Park via interposed companies are the Cotoner Martos brothers, Greats of Spain and intimates of the emeritus king, they are the children of Juan Carlos I's right hand for decades, the deceased Majorcan aristocrat Nicolás Cotoner y Cotoner, first head of the House of the King for 15 years (1975-1990), and of the also aristocrat and millionaire Trinidad Martos Zabálburu, V Viscountess of Ugena. A fortune of 300 million euros has been attributed to them, mainly related to real estate and large pockets of land located especially in the Community of Madrid. The Cotoner family is part of the intimate nucleus of King Juan Carlos I, who considered the patriarch, his preceptor when he arrived in Spain and died in 1996, an “adoptive father.” The link has remained until today. According to Vanity Fair, the Cotoner estate on the outskirts of Madrid, La Escorzonera (where Victoria Federica, the king's granddaughter, celebrated her debut in 2019), was one of the last places where the monarch took refuge in Spain before announce that he was leaving the country in favor of Abu Dhabi.
The ruling records that the company that owns the park, Aspro Parks, began and completed the dolphinarium works before completing the processing of the special plan that the urban planning regulations of the San Bartolomé de Tirajana City Council required approval in order to undertake a development project. that draft. With the works already done, Aspro Parks asked the City Council and the Cabildo of Gran Canaria for a territorial qualification that would allow them to be legalized, but both administrations ruled against it. However, the Cotoner lawyers managed to get the Government of the Canary Islands to grant this work the status of "Territorial Action Plan" (PAT), a figure that at that time allowed certain actions carried out on rural land to be legalized "on an exceptional basis." (as was the case) for reasons "of general interest".
The problem was that the Administrative Litigation Chamber of the TSJC maintains that this figure "cannot simply protect discretionary actions", without explaining what the public interest is being pursued, something that is missing in this file. "Such motivation is absent in the decree examined, which simply qualifies as an improvement of the complementary tourist offer and improvement of the economy and employment, without warning that it is the legalization of an activity that had already been carried out," said the magistrate. speaker, Javier Varona. In this case, the TSJC highlights, the Government of the Canary Islands decided "without any motivation" to exempt this Palmitos Park work from undergoing an environmental impact assessment and legalized works that contravened the provisions of the general municipal plan. And all this, adds the Chamber, despite the fact that the figure of the Territorial Action Plan that was granted to make it possible does not "allow deviation from the determinations of the municipal urban plan." The appeal that has led to the declaration of nullity of the permits for the Palmitos Park dolphinarium has been promoted by Mantenimiento del Territorio Canario, a company that was in charge of its construction and that has been in litigation since then with Aspro Park.
