The Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid has dismissed the nine appeals filed by different associations, companies and individuals (among others Ecologistas en Acción, the Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid, Muñoyerro Desarrollos Urbanos and Propiedades Chamartín SA ) against the Agreement of the Governing Council of the Community of Madrid of March 25, 2020, which definitively concluded the Specific Modification of the General Urban Planning Plan of the capital in relation to the Prolongación de la Castellana and Colonia Campamento, which It supposes, pending the appeal before the Supreme Court, the endorsement of the urban planning of the space called Madrid Nuevo Norte.
The plaintiffs requested, first of all, that the agreements adopted by the Community of Madrid when it modified the General Urban Planning Plan of 1997 be declared null and void, since, according to their criteria, it was a measure designed to cover up a revision of the urban planning of the city that was forged, in addition, they said, violating the principle of the procedure.
Simultaneously, they requested the radical nullity of the agreement for having been the result of a previous agreement between ADIF/DCN and the Madrid City Council, something prohibited by virtue of what was disputed in article 25 of the Land Law of the Community of Madrid (LSCM) ; In addition, also, because in his opinion, the plan alters the balance between buildability and the quantity and quality of the endowments, lacks the adequate consideration of urban development alternatives in its processing and environmental evaluation, or that the land is currently used for urban planning entrusted to the railway public domain the sober placement of them of an enormous loss of concrete in which the mayoralties of the green areas of the development will be implanted.
Thus, the magistrates dismiss each and every one of the allegations presented by the defendants, beginning with the first, considering that the urban citizenship carried out through the specific modification of the General Urban Planning Plan "followed the appropriate procedure", as it is a "mere modification of the current planning and not a revision of the PGOUM of 1997".
"The choice of the procedure processed -says the resolution-, is justified in accordance with what is disputed in articles 67.1, 68.1 and 69.1 of the LSCM, firstly because its territorial scope, which is limited in its management to two planning areas (APR 08.03 "Prolongación de la Castellana" and APE 05.27 "Colonia Campamento"), absolutely coincides with the integrity of the territorial space of the municipality of Madrid, constituting only a very small territorial space of the municipality, taking into account the global dimension of the municipal territory”.
And secondly, because the questioned modification "does not imply a change of such magnitude that it would affect the global organization of the POGOUM of 1997 in such a way that it would make it necessary to completely replant it, even in the partial way that the defendant intends." "The elements of the structuring arrangement that it entails -advances the sentence-, do not imply, in any way, a modification of the territorial model adopted, whose concurrence is demanded both in article 68.3 of the LSCM and in article 154 of the Urban Planning Regulations (RPU)”.
'To keep items regenerating'
To conclude their response to the first allegation of the defendants, the magistrates point out that "in the urban regeneration action carried out by the adopted measure, the objectives of urban regeneration and rehabilitation, of urban stitching to close the scar generated by the infrastructures in the fabric of the city and, ultimately, the integration of the railway infrastructures in it, with respect to what was contemplated in the PGOUM of 1997, including the modification of the year 2002”.
The current modification –the resolution specifies- does not alter the classification of the soil; does not entail a significant increase in buildable area for economic activities; a buildable area for a protection reserve in uprooting at 20,78 percent is planned, when in the previous general plan a minimum reserve for this housing regime was not established; integrated a railway structure with the construction of a new intermodal station that does not imply a change in the urban model of the city of Madrid, it is that it was contemplated in the PGOUM of 1997 and failed in March nor does it imply an increase in the population in this term municipal of madrid higher than 20 percent.
In relation to the second of the allegations, the magistrates affirm that "the intervention of DCN, beneficiary of ADIF's urban development, which recognizes the very introduction of the appealed modification and which led to the elaboration of the 2017 bases document, we determined that our meetings in no way before a planning agreement, later materialized in the modification ".
The judges affirm that "we cannot deduce the existence of misuse of power or arbitrary action in the approval of the modification, because it is enough to look at the planning antecedents to notice the reasons for the necessary and obligatory collaboration of the administrations in the execution and development of the new urban area, which is not blurred by the integration of the private company in its definitive execution”.
And he adds: "Even though for dialectical purposes it could be tried that materially, not formally, the scope of the agreement between DCN and the City Council could have a direct relationship with the modification of the General Plan, and that this would have a concordance with the points that in the same are collected, its eventual consideration as a planning agreement would not by itself determine the nullity of the modification, since such a fact would not mean that the embodiment in the urban instrument was carried out in contravention of the general interest”.
In any case, the allegation refers to the improvement of the land actually affected by the public railway domain, there is the placement of a huge loss of concrete in which the largest of the green areas of the development will be implanted, the Chamber maintains that "the new land generated by the coverage of the railway system is registrable, in accordance with Royal Decree 1.1 1093/1997, on the registration in the Property Registry of Acts of an Urban Nature.”
Therefore, the magistrates dismissed the allegation planted as there was no infraction or misuse of power, "being legally and urbanistically justified the treatment that in the regulation is attributed to the so-called 'slab' of the railway lands".
