Despite having tied up the support of the PSC, the Government has not yet guaranteed the budgets for 2024. It needs the commons to facilitate them. In En Comú Podemos they turn their noses up and have warned that they will not agree until the Government withdraws the urban master plan (PDU) of the Hard Rock Recreational and Tourist Center (CRT) in Vila-seca and Salou. But the The Catalan executive warns that there is little room for maneuver to paralyze it by its own and unilateral decision if it is not by assuming a millionaire financial compensation for patrimonial responsibility.
By patrimonial responsibility is understood the obligation of public administrations to repair the damage caused. Damages that include the excess, for example, for the architectural and urban planning projects that Hard Rock may have ordered, for the cost of lawyers, for travel, etc. As economic damages, there would also be emergent damages, that is to say, all that business prospect that the private company calculated to have been slowed down by the intervention of the public administration.
In the project in Vila-seca and Salou there are three actors involved: CriteriaCaixa – owner of the land–, Hard Rock – the investment company– and the Catalan Soil Institute or Incasòl, which depends on the Generalitat and which exercises intermediary There is no clause whereby the Generalitat has to indemnify CriteriaCaixa or Hard Rock. Nor between the two private companies, and not even an obligation on their part to go ahead with the operation. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to renegotiate the 120 million agreed in 2020 for the purchase of the land. Despite everything, patrimonial responsibility is on the table.
In any case, it is not an automated procedure. It demands that the injured company, Hard Rock, claim this responsibility. It can do so perfectly, since the Generalitat, for example, granted it the authorization in 2018 for the installation and operation of a casino in the CRT which, with the betting rooms, reaches 30,000 square meters.
The urban master plan was approved in 2016. In 2020, the judges declared it partially invalid following an administrative dispute promoted by the Group for the Study and Protection of Catalan Ecosystems – Ecologistes de Catalunya (Gepec), noting that “the bulk of the open spaces and public facilities in Sector 1 are located in an area at risk of serious accidents from the chemical industry”.
Now, after dozens of reports, an environmental one is pending, the last one left. In 2022, Climate Action already issued an unfavorable one. The PDU was modified again and is now awaiting this new report which the Government admits is on the way out. However, another unfavorable consideration would not stop the project either, as remedial measures, suggestions and compensations to be studied are always included.
Are there, then, possibilities for the project to be stopped without incurring financial costs? The least harmful option, which would prevent anyone from getting hurt, would be for the multinational to give up. As indicated by the Government, Hard Rock, even though the recreational complex should have seen the light of day years ago, remains interested in it. But even so, the company affirms to the Catalan Executive that it does not currently have the necessary funding. It will only be put there when the PDU is approved.
Finally, in the event that it goes ahead, no one can escape the fact that new administrative disputes will be filed before the courts against the project. And that there will be some opposition in the street.
Be that as it may, for all these last factors the Government – which does not see the complex favorably – is convinced that it is complicated for the Hard Rock to crystallize.
