The Supreme Court has sided with tennis player Alex Corretja for a Barcelona court to study possible compensation for patrimonial liability of the Sant Cugat del Vallès (Barcelona) town hall, for a house that he built and was ordered demolished.
Corretja requested a first building license in 2001 from the town hall to build a chalet, but a neighbor appealed and in 2006 it was annulled by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia. This ordered “the demolition of everything built under the canceled building permit”, understanding that the license substantially infringes the regulations of the Partial Plan for the Costa del Golf Sector of the Sant Cugat city council.
After that, the former tennis player claimed patrimonial responsibility from the consistory, but gave up when in 2009 he was granted a new license under the new urban planning, so that the second of the licenses legalized everything already built with the first, required by a demolition that did not occur.
The residents appealed this decision and finally reached an agreement with the city council that compensated them with 600,000 euros, giving themselves “totally settled and liquidated.”
On the other hand, the 2006 sentence that harmed the extenista became final in 2015, for which he claimed patrimonial responsibility from the consistory a year later, which was denied and Corretja went to court for patrimonial and moral damages.
The Contentious-Administrative Court number 1 of Barcelona dismissed compensation to the tennis player considering that the claim for patrimonial responsibility was prescribed, a thesis that was confirmed by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia.
Corretja appealed to the Supreme Court, which now highlights in his ruling that “the right to compensation would not be prescribed, because that prescription has been justified and motivated by considering the first license of 2001, annulled in 2006 and without considering the relevance already exposed to the 2009 license, which was annulled in 2015, when the claim was made in 2016”.
For this reason, he agrees with Corretja and orders the proceedings to be rolled back so that the Barcelona court can proceed, once the prescription has been excluded, to examine whether there is compensation from the city council and its amount.
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