Thousands demonstrate against Hard Rock hotel-casino project in Tarragona

Several environmental groups demonstrated on Sunday in the southern city of Tarragona against the Hard Rock hotel-casino project, planned to be built near the PortAventura amusement park in Vila-seca.

Over 80 entities backed the protest, the largest so far seen in the area, with the motto: 'Let's defend our ground, let's prepare the future!'

4,000 people demonstrated, according to organizers, against the leisure complex and the business model it comes with.

The project has been in the making for years, and recently it was temporarily halted over environmental criteria after the Catalan climate action ministry issued an unfavorable report.

But one of the agreements reached between the Socialists and the Catalan executive for the former to pass the Catalan budget was for the Hard Rock project to proceed.

The international company behind the project proposed building a recreational tourist center, but the ministry stated that the sustainability aspects requested were not fulfilled and focused on the "lack of environmental compensations and ecological connectivity guarantees." 

Delayed urbanism development plan

During Sunday's demonstration, the Aturem Hard Rock (Stop Hard Rock) platform's spokesperson, Eloi Redón, said that the Catalan government had already delayed greenlighting the new urbanism development plan to make the hotel-casino complex possible.

The reasons behind this are the "social pressure" and political "reluctance" regarding the project.

The government planned to approve the new plan last Wednesday, but this was delayed with no new date.

"We see that the Catalan parliament is speaking more and more about the project, even in this week's plenary session," Redón said on Sunday, "although we saw political groups in favor of the project, there was a lot of reluctance and concerns."

"With all the current social context, we think that these doubts are a clear sign that politicians do not see it feasible to approve a project of such characteristics," he added.

One of the environmental activists' concerns is that the Catalan government will approve the new urbanism development plan during the summer as it is "more difficult" to organize demonstrations.

Redón has already warned that they will organize new protests if that is the case.