The
OLIVE PRESS
FREE
GIBRALTAR
Vol. 6 Issue 164
www.theolivepress.es
The Rock’s ONLY free local paper
January 12th - January 25th 2022
LEGAL ODDITIES You can't build sandcastles in the Canaries or play dominoes in Sevilla... Spain has some daft local laws See Page 6
IT’S TIME TO PULL TOGETHER CHIEF Minister Fabian Picardo, has called for unity in the New Year after a divisive and challenging 2021. Wishing the community on the Rock a happy and healthy year, he also warned that when the going gets tough Gibraltarians must not give up. It was a difficult year with over 100 lives lost to COVID 19 and more than €300 million, half of the Rock’s annual revenue, spent on pandemic costs, he said in his New Year’s message. However, the Chief Minister said he was ‘deeply optimistic and positive about The Rock’s prospects’ yet also self reflective, saying he knew that ‘we have not got everything right’. But he added that ‘the government team has been strong and effective and whether it has been a popular decision or not, we have done the right thing’.
Iconic Calata Hotel closes after 60 years to make way for five-star Hilton
GOODBYE OLD FRIEND
Bureaucracy
Picardo also made reference to Brexit, where he considers it ‘fundamental that we get our future relationship with the EU right’. However, he maintained that the government is ‘closer to Britain than we have been for generations’ and assured that they are not going to do ‘anything to change that’. The Deputy Chief Minister, and Liberal Party Leader, Joseph Garcia used his New Year message to highlight the cost of the COVID pandemic on lives lost and its impact on the economy. In the case of Gibraltar being positioned as a third country outside the EU, he warned it may result in greater bureaucracy, disruption and red-tape for citizens and businesses as the Rock adapts to a new reality.
GIBRALTAR is waving goodbye to an old friend as a new pretender takes its place as a luxury beachside retreat. Planning permission has been filed for a new five-star Hilton hotel for the site of the old Caleta Hotel.
Demolished
The landmark building, a four-star hotel built into the cliffs overlooking Catalan Bay, closed its doors on December 31 after almost 60 years and will be demolished to
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TM
By Fiona Govan & Dilip Kuner
make way for the Hilton. Plans for the new hotel were filed by the Hilton Group last week at Gibraltar’s Development and Planning Commission and include designs for a 12 storey building that will boast 166 rooms as well as a dining room, ballroom and Spa. There will also be a terrace and outdoor pool area. But more contentiously, the development will also include two luxury residential blocks flanking the new hotel. Plans for the north block show it will comprise 40 apartments over eight floors that will be earmarked for professional Gibraltarian families. However, the south block will have 88 apartments and duplexes over 13 floors, which will be open to those who seek to move to Gibraltar in the finance and gaming sectors. In this way, developers hope to boost investment on the Rock.
Once approved, the project is expected to take three-and-a-half years to complete. It has the backing of the Gibraltar authorities who welcome Hilton as the second international hotel chain to invest on the Rock. Despite welcoming the proposal for a new hotel, the opposition GSD has raised concerns about the planned 128 apartments. Damon Bossino, the shadow minister for planning said that he was concerned the proposals could badly affect the Gorham’s Cave UNESCO World Heritage site buffer zone.
Suffer
On top of that current residents of Catalan Bay could suffer from dramatically increased road congestion of the ‘already saturated’ Sir Herbert Miles Road. Bossino also criticised the developers for claiming the 128 apartments were critical to make the
project economically viable. This, he said, ‘seemingly leaves too little wiggle room for planning alternatives to be considered. It is plain to anyone viewing the present designs that our narrow, small shoreline, will be further negatively impacted and blighted by a solid mass of concrete for the sake of developer and investor profit’. He added that Catalan Bay village ‘will be architecturally swamped, destroying the coastline’s current Italianate setting, with the present buildings sympathetically melding with both the coast and its Jurassic backdrop. These features are what gives the whole area such an appeal’. Caleta Hotel manager Bruno Callaghan said the changes were ‘bittersweet’, recalling that it was his grandfather who opened the original Caleta Palace on the site in 1964. Since then, the hotel has always been run as a family business and has hosted events such as Miss Gibraltar and the International Chess Festival.