Under suspicion in Benalmádena's Vistamar hotel case: a councillor and a civil servant

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Facing questions under oath this Tuesday: the local council allegedly allowed members involved in a dodgy leasing scheme, for which six people have already been arrested, to run it as a business for 15 months while rent-dodging and worse

José Carlos García

Malaga

Wednesday, 8 April 2026, 10:31

The judge investigating the illegal operation of the Vistamar hotel in Benalmádena Costa, for which six people were arrested, has summoned the local councillor for business licensing, Raúl Campos, and a civil servant from his department to testify as suspects.

Campos, acting within his authority, authorised the hotel's reopening in June 2024 after it had been closed for a year due to its illegal status to function as a hotel. He did so based on the opinion of the head of the legal services for this department, who has already been charged and who failed to verify either compliance with tourism regulations or the legitimacy of the operating company.

It all happened after two court rulings had already confirmed that the hotel had been fraudulently seized from its owners, who had not received any rent money since 2019 . Also, that a preliminary court hearing had initiated proceedings to return the property to its owners. Then, another municipal official had signed off a damning, 13-page report stating that there were more than enough reasons to deny the reopening, including the "inaccuracy or falsity" of the submitted documentation. Falsification, fraud, crimes against the administration, obstruction of justice and organised crime are the charges in this case, which is being investigated at Torremolinos' court of first instance.

The councillor and the civil servant now under suspicion will have to appear before the judge this Tuesday to explain not only that decision, but how the hotel managed to operate as a business for more than 15 months. The business crimes unit for the National Police at Malaga's provincial police station described this situation as "a complex scheme". For the last ten of those 15 months, the hotel was, according to the term cited in the region's legislation, a "clandestine" hotel, and the regional government informed Benalmádena town hall of this fact on 5 February 2025. Despite this, the hotel was not closed down until 7 October of last year.

By then, it had also been more than three months since a Supreme Court ruling had upheld the lower court's ruling declaring the hotel's operation as illegal. This scheme had been carried out through a succession of companies that started with the original lessee, an Iranian citizen. He was not the seventh person arrested in this case because he was already in prison for another offence when Operation Target was launched. This man then transferred ownership of the hotel to the Vega Group, a conglomerate of companies with a head office on the iconic Calle Marqués de Larios in Madrid, to which the other detainees belong.

One case, two criteria

In fact, councillor Campos' first decision regarding the Vistamar was to close it down. In June 2023, after the May elections, the People's Party (PP) councillor found himself with a file on his desk, started by the outgoing PSOE governing team. The file proposed closure of the hotel, based on a report made by the now-indicted civil servant for not being "in legitimate possession" of the property. Thus, that is what he did.

To reopen the hotel, the scheme used two contracts signed on the same date by different leasing companies, one of them the same company whose hotel had been closed by the town council in a file from the previous legislature, and the other company whose tax ID number (NIF) had already been revoked.

In March 2024, the same individuals authorised the hotel's reopening for maintenance work by means of a contract in which the leasing company was the same one that had closed the hotel. Then, they gave the green light in June to reopen the hotel thanks to another contract, despite it being signed on the same date as the previous one with a different leasing company (also prohibited from operating with a revoked NIF) and being wrongly classified for its business type (industrial sublease, only permitted for operating businesses). These were some of the "inaccuracies or falsehoods" that the municipal official flagged up in the report that was rejected.