TORREVIEJA AUDITORIUM NOT LICENSED TO OPEN?

Throughout recent coverage in The Leader, as well as other local newspapers, we know how Orihuela town hall are beginning to crack down on businesses operating without the appropriate licenses, threatening hard working people with fines and potential closures. We have recently seen that the Ombudsman has warned Torrevieja that the city council there must also start to clamp down on dealing with rogue businesses and music, entertainment and noise issues in particular. Now, according to the green Los Verdes party in Torrevieja, a new scandal has come to light that claims that the new Torrevieja Auditorium, which has already played host to a number of events and is set to welcome Spanish superstar David Bisbal this week, failed the mandatory inspection for the issue of licenses to open and operate due to “deficiencies and omissions in the works and the documentation”.

The Department of the Interior announced that the project "does not meet the requirements, conditions and specifications, which for this type of local regulation establishes the existing Public Entertainment, Recreation and Public Facilities, and shall condition the correction of deficiencies expressed in this report and verified by the Technical Services of the City Council the appropriateness of the solutions adopted to remedy the deficiencies or omissions prior to the granting of the corresponding license”. Those improvements and verifications have not been carried out, according to the green party, so the building is still not in a position of being licensed to operate.

The report of the Department of Interior identifies shortcomings in the implementation of the rules of signage, lighting, fire safety and access and availability regulations, including identifying the requirements to be included in the final certificate of works to be admitted prior to granting the license to open.

The city council has ignored requests to answer questions and provide the relevant documents counteracting the claims for the past seven months, according to Los Verdes, after numerous formal requests and minuted discussions in the town hall meetings.

The Los Verdes believe that this is a “new chapter of shamelessness” in the history of the ruling Partido Popular council that has “tarnished the inauguration of the new auditorium, giving greater credibility and providing more evidence to the criminal complaint for election offenses” which are currently being investigated in the build up to the last municipal elections.

Serious concern is now being raised that in the event of an incident, there may be no come back or liability and damages may not be covered by any insurance policy, should something go wrong during a concert like the one this week which will see nearly two thousand people active around the new facility to welcome the biggest concert to date in a potentially illegal building.