CBRE, the multinational real estate developer in a silk suit, has launched an ambitious public auction in southern Gran Canaria, including four hotels, some thirty commercial premises, and plots of land in prime tourist areas such as Maspalomas and Arguineguín. The starting price: €75 million. But the cake comes with a surprise: part of these assets are sitting on a judicial time bomb that has not been defused for more than three decades.
Behind the glittering window displays—hotels like Livvo (the management company of Grupo Martinón), Lago Taurito, Valle Taurito, and Costa Taurito—lies a long-standing dispute that threatens to spoil the party for more than one unsuspecting investor. Because some of these assets are located on land whose legitimate ownership was recognized in a final ruling by the Supreme Court in 2005, in favor of the liquidators of Proivesa, a company bankrupt back in the 1s. The plaintiffs have asked the Commercial Court No. XNUMX of Las Palmas to halt the auction until it is clear who really controls these properties. Failure to do so could bog down the process for years.
The story reeks of the black book of regional Spain: in 1991, businessman Santana Cazorla, then holding 25% of Proivesa, took advantage of the company's collapse to "buy himself" a 180.000-square-meter plot of land for 200 million pesetas. That's easy to say. He segregated the property, changed the registration numbers, and placed two of the hotels that CBRE now wants to auction on these new plots as if nothing had happened. The scam was detected by the bankruptcy trustees, who took the case to court. They won in 1997. The Supreme Court upheld the case in 2005. And yet, here we are, almost 20 years later, with those same lands forming part of a multi-million-pound transaction, as if no one remembered anything.
The package is now on the market as part of the bankruptcy proceedings for Mar Abierto SL, another piece in the corporate chess game of the Santana Cazorla group. CBRE is acting under the umbrella of the Lener bankruptcy administration, which blesses the transaction with the usual rhetoric: "unique investment opportunity," "operating assets," "guaranteed profitability." The firm's head of hotels in Iberia, Jorge Ruiz, puts the finishing touches on the cake for the opportunistic funds circling Europe: there's high occupancy, good weather, and tour operators happy to keep filling beds.
But the legal situation threatens to burst the bubble. The disputed properties, which have been subject to precautionary measures since 2022, remain the subject of an open process. And if the judge decides to halt the auction, the mess could snowball: cross-appeals, challenges, registry insecurity, and a new lesson in how in Spain the past does not expire as easily as some believe.
Meanwhile, CBRE is moving quickly to close the deal before the conflict erupts. The auction brings together the hotels, the commercial premises in Taurito, the tourist plots, and, as the icing on the cake, the Hotel Las Tirajanas, inland. A set of attractive assets, yes, but with the bitter taste of a dispute that reeks of corporate fraud that's decades old. What's at stake isn't just an auction. It's the credibility of the system. Because if, after 30 years of ongoing lawsuits, these assets can still be sold off as if nothing had happened, the question is inevitable: "For whom does justice really work in this country?" the victims ask, and this May they requested injunctions from a commercial judge in Las Palmas.
