The base still needs removing and there is some rubble clearance work left, which will take another month.

The owners of the hotel building, a company linked to the Accor hotel group, commissioned Almeria-based demolition firm AGI to carry out this process alongside one of the busiest roads in the city centre.

Prior to the start of the demolition process, the company took all the necessary measures so that the process would cause as little disruption to traffic as possible.

For safety reasons, the perimeter fencing remains in place around the entire area, from the Aurora bridge to the southern part of the site formerly occupied by the hotel.

Its demolition may pave the way for a new building taller than the one demolished following the fire, although plans to extend it by three further floors were already in place prior to the fire.

For the past two years, the hotel's owners have been processing an application to allow for an increase in the floor area of both this hotel and the other two they own in the Guadalmedina area: Ibis Budget and Suite Novotel.

A decree the regional government approved in 2021 protects the project. It allows the floor area of existing hotels to increase by up to 20 per cent if this results in an upgrade in category.

According to the document, the Ibis Málaga Centro hotel, which had 189 double rooms (378 hotel beds) and 47 parking spaces, was to gain 19 more rooms. The goal was to upgrade the hotel's rating from the current two stars to three stars or higher, with an increase of 390 square metres for new services.

Consequently, the plan was to increase the number of storeys from ground floor plus three and ground floor plus four to ground floor plus six and ground floor plus seven.

The building replacing the Ibis in the future will be able to have the newly approved height. This is because, as expert sources have pointed out, planning parameters relating to height or volume apply to a plot of land, not to a building.

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