Operator News
Spain – Negotiations over sale of land for Hard Rock Casino still open in Spain
By Phil - 14 November 2019
The government of Catalonia has assured lawmakers that the negotiations for Hard Rock to acquire the land in of Vila-seca and Salou are still open.
The government was responding to a question put forward by members of the Comú Podem coalition. The Minister of Territory and Sustainability, Damià Calvet said that the government “does not foresee any cost if the project does not start up.”
The Generalitat plans to acquire the land from Criteria CAIXA – the investment holding company of La Caixa and then sell the land to Hard Rock. However, the terms and clauses of the sales contract have not yet been defined. In June, Calvet assured lawmakers that the purchase will be made with no additional cost from state coffers. The sale of the land is estimated to cost around E120m.
In June the local communes registered a request for Damià Calvet, to appear in a Parliament committee to explain if the government is making progress with the land for the Hard Rock Entertainment World venue.
The request asked that Calvet provide an update on “the negotiations being carried out by the Government of the Generalitat and Incasol for the purchase of land.” Public company the Catalan Land Institute (Incasol), owns the land where the resort will be built.
The initiative arose after an environmental group released a statement critical of the project stating that as only Hard Rock had presented a proposal to develop the Tourist and Recreation Complex (CRT) in Vila Seca and Salou and other investors have backed off.
In May 2018 the Government of Catalonia declared via its Official Gazette that it had given Hard Rock Entertainment World permission to build a casino and leisure complex in Vila-Seca and Salou. The casino will be called Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tarragona, España. The Hard Rock Entertainment World complex will include two hotels with over a thousand rooms, a large shopping area, along with entertainment facilities, and the casino. The casino could have as many as 1,200 slot machines and 100 table games making it one of the largest casinos in Europe. The company is reportedly planning to invest as much as €2 billion into the scheme.
A large scale project in the area has been in the pipeline for years but has been fraught with difficulties. In June 2015, the Veremonte Group, the investment company that had been leading the initiative to create Europe’s largest holiday resort in Europe (under the name BCN World) announced its decision to withdraw from the project. When it was abandoned In order to guarantee the project’s continuation the Catalan Government reached an agreement with La Caixa Bank for the rights to buy the 500 hectares of land allocated for BCN World. The new agreements give the winning bidder the right to enforce the option to buy the land which is currently owned by the Catalan Government via public company the Catalan Land Institute (Incasòl).
