Confusion Reigns As Police Turn Up In Force At Upmarket Marbella Hotel

It would appear that the National Police were deployed in large numbers this Monday, June 3, to the five-star Guadalpin Banus Hotel in Marbella.

Video footage posted on the Instagram site marbellasequeja2021 showed a massive amount of police activity at the facility. Although what happened exactly is still unclear, various comments in reply to the video suggested that the hotel had been closed.

One user reported witnessing at least 10 police vehicles at the scene while another suggested that the hotel’s employees could be out of work just as Summer begins. None of this has been confirmed of course.

The Marbella hotel has been at the centre of a lawsuit

Located in the jet-set Costa del Sol resort of Marbella, the hotel has been at the centre of a lawsuit brought by one of the building’s many owners, from the company SPV.

The hotel’s kitchens, terraces and other common areas were due to be opened today, but a decree from the Commercial Court No1 of Malaga last week warned that such action could result in the closure of the establishment and even the loss of its hotel status.

In 2019, SPV acquired a credit right within the framework of the insolvency proceedings of Aifos – the builder and developer of the hotel – although there were discrepancies regarding the ownership of the boundaries of certain spaces. This was the subject of a parallel legal proceeding.

SPV claimed that it had owned: ’14 apartments with 28 rooms and commercial premises’ in the Guadalpín Banús hotel since 2019.

SPV claimed it had never charged Grisoma Hotelera SL and rent

According to malagahoy.es last Wednesday, June 29, SPV company pointed out that it had not charged a single cent in rent for the use of these spaces in the building. The hotel is operated by Grisoma Hotelera SL.

‘We do not want to close the hotel, we have never asked for it. We do not have a problem with the workers or the rest of the owners, there are just too many managers’, SPV stressed.

They emphasised that the best solution to the situation was to change the hotel management. ‘Let serious people come in’, they suggested, because Grisoma: ‘does not pay the rent’.

Specifically, they specified that SPV owns 3 premises in the building, the so-called A, F and G. The first corresponds to ‘a restaurant that is closed. This was already handed over after a court order, together with the apartments, in May 2021.

Meanwhile, G includes ‘restaurants and terraces facing the beach’, and F contains ‘their kitchens’. The company added that in June 2021, they sealed an agreement with Grisoma whereby both companies ‘recognised the boundaries and delimitation of premises A, F and G based on the Aifos plans’.

‘Those who have to leave are the managers of the hotel because they are not businessmen and they are only going to take advantage of it’, SPV stated in reference to Grisoma. ‘We have not charged a single euro for the lease or for the premises or for the apartments’, they detailed.

SPV suggested Grisoma offered to pay them €10,000 per month for 6,000m of premises

In a last meeting held on December 21 of last year with Grisoma, the latter proposed paying ‘€10,000 per month’, as rent, for what is “6,000 meters of premises on the beachfront and without any guarantee’, clarified SPV.

As a result, SPV pointed out that they do not seek to ‘do harm’, but prefer instead that ‘the hotel can continue to be open with the workers and the rest of the owners”, in order to ‘recover’ the value of their assets.

In response, Ramón Pons, the director of the Guadalpín Banús Hotel and representative of Grisoma, stressed that ‘the rent is not being paid because SPV has the premises closed.

He assured that both the terraces and the kitchens belonged to the ‘owner of the hotel services, with which the operating company Grisoma has a rental contract that is being fulfilled’.

Today’s opening was for the premises in F and G

At this point, it should be remembered that today’s opening was for the premises of F and G, where the terraces overlooking the beachfront and their kitchens, which are providing services, are located.

‘Although SPV considers that the kitchens are theirs, there is another man who also considers that they are his’, claimed Pons.

As a result: ‘The owner of the hotel services has filed a demarcation complaint so that the court determines what corresponds to each one’, and that is pending to be resolved, he continued.

‘If SPV did not have the will to close the hotel, it would wait for the courts to determine which of the two owners corresponded to the kitchens’, suggested Pons. He pointed out that SPV had also ‘closed its rooms’ when ‘the price of the rent is the same as the rest of the owners’.