Las Vegas Sands, the American group of casinos, has decided: the mega-complex of games envisaged in Madrid – in the image and likeness of those it owns in Las Vegas and Macao – will not be built. The colossus of tycoon Sheldon Adelson has announced that he will not make "a formal proposal to invest more than 30 billion dollars (21,8 billion euros)" for the construction of Eurovegas, the maxi casino of Europe. Las Vegas Sand, instead of the Old Continent, prefers to launch itself on Asia, especially South Korea and Japan.
The pharaonic project – now clinically dead – included twelve hotels, six casinos, various shops, restaurants and show halls. A city of games that would have created, according to the supporters of the European Las Vegas, around 260 direct and indirect jobs.
The foundation stone of the mega-complex should have been laid at the end of 2013, but suddenly the American group announced that it had decided to close the project, which seemed to have stalled in recent months. On Friday, the Spanish vice-premier Soraya Saenz de Santamarìa evoked "new fiscal conditions, restrictions on the entry of new operators and a legal shield on investments". But both the Madrid government and the European Commission had said no.
The death of Eurovegas puts an end to two years of controversy between those in favor and against the birth of the city of games. For the former, the project would have created jobs in a country with a high unemployment rate. The latter, on the other hand, criticized the precariousness and low added value of the megacasino and asked for a more solid and socially acceptable economic model for Spain after the real estate fiasco. But the real bone of contention was the group's request for an exemption from the anti-smoking law in its casinos.
