Digital newspaper from the south of Gran Canaria
Digital newspaper from the south of Gran Canaria
The Canary Islands government has halved Next Generation EU funding for Lopesan’s solar panel installations. The bureaucracy surrounding European funds has created a peculiar situation in the islands’ energy sector. The Canary Islands Government’s Directorate General of Energy has issued resolution number 831/2026, a technical document that partially terminates subsidies from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Facility (RRF). The paradox lies in the list of beneficiaries. Lopesan Hotel Management SLU, the largest tourism corporation in southern Gran Canaria and owner of the high-end Meloneras resort complexes, appears on the same list of financial cuts as a dozen small residential owners and individuals who installed solar panels on the roofs of their single-family homes.
The public order confirms that several beneficiaries of incentives linked to self-consumption and storage using renewable energy sources have failed to justify all the investments initially committed to. The text reveals that audits by the EU’s Next Generation Energy Transition Projects Unit have detected discrepancies between the generation capacity declared in the applications and the infrastructure ultimately implemented. This resolution, forced by European deadlines, has lumped together the hotel holding company that manages thousands of beds on the San Bartolomé de Tirajana coast with ordinary citizens who were simply seeking to reduce their daytime electricity bills.
The case of the giant hotel chain in the south of the island stands out due to the metrics of its application, IA2021018658. The Regional Ministry of Ecological Transition and Energy had originally allocated €25.705,68 to Lopesan Hotel Management SLU for the implementation of renewable energy systems in its self-consumption networks. The final review of the documentation provided by the hotel chain’s engineers has forced the regional government to only consider €12.370,86 justified, which implies a loss of the right to receive more than 50% of the public aid requested under the European Union’s recovery mechanism.
The technical reason for this financial cut falls under reduction code 1.1 of the official scale. The Canary Islands Government explicitly states that the photovoltaic generation capacity installed and justified at the destination is lower than that declared in the aid application. This calculation error places the multinational tourism company in the same administrative situation as individuals María Mercedes Piñero Mesa, Nada Hildegard Stingl, and Ángel Luis Castro Ramos, island residents who have seen their domestic subsidies reduced by three thousand and six thousand euros, respectively, for precisely the same technical discrepancy in the calculation of kilowatts installed on the substrate.
The specific cases outlined in the regional resolution reveal other unusual situations that highlight the complexity of auditing Next Generation funds in the southern region. The technical reasons for reductions, detailed in the annex prepared by Director General Alberto Hernández Suárez, include penalties for installing storage batteries with capacities lower than those promised (reason 1.3), a deficiency detected in the file of individual Julio César Bravo Ruiz. Public oversight also penalizes the voluntary or forced exclusion of clean energy storage systems, compelling technicians to apply restrictive compensation scales to avoid violating Royal Decree 477/2021.
The section on additional penalties describes almost comical scenes from the building inspection. Reason 2.1.1 details the withdrawal of public funds because the metal structure erected by the applicants is not legally considered a canopy, or because the installed roofing is not capable of supporting 50% of the photovoltaic power declared in the plans. The General Directorate of Energy has also blocked subsidies for collective self-consumption (reason 2.2) and bonuses for asbestos removal from residential roofs because the authorized installers in the south of the island failed to demonstrate proper management of hazardous waste.
The resolution, electronically signed by unit head Raquel Moreno de la Rosa, clarifies that none of the entities listed in this partial settlement had benefited from the advance payment option. The absence of advance payments exempts Lopesan and the other sanctioned residents from facing a capital repayment procedure or the return of late payment interest to the Canary Islands Treasury. The ruling definitively closes the administrative proceedings, ordering the payment of the justified balances exclusively from the community budgets managed by the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
Those affected have a strict one-month deadline to file an optional appeal for reconsideration with the regional government department to try to correct the power deficiencies detected by water and energy inspectors. The legal alternative requires resorting to the courts by filing an administrative appeal with the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands within two months. Lopesan’s bureaucratic setback highlights the difficulties large corporations in southern Gran Canaria face in meeting the technical requirements of European resilience funds, resources that demand mathematical precision that makes no distinction between the balance sheet of a hotel empire in Meloneras and the photovoltaic installation of a residential villa in the midlands.
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