En This democratic press medium, which strictly cultivates freedom of expression, so that citizens are duly informed of news events, last week we published an opinion column, in which we refer to Official Letter No. 549 of July 19, 2007, signed by the architect, Luis Eduardo Bresciani, Head of the Urban Development Division (DDU) of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning (Minvu), addressed to the engineer Marco Antonio Vidal, in his capacity as Director of Municipal Works (DOM) of Central Station. In that instruction, the municipal official was told that continued construction in a sector that does not have urban regulation was inadmissible, a ministerial mandate that was respected by said official until he died.
The above, within the episode of the so-called vertical ghettos built with illegal building permits, carried out starting in 2013 in that commune, because the officials, architects by profession, who succeeded Vidal as DOM, while Rodrigo Delgado served as mayor, disregarded the peremptory instruction of that ministry. Demonstrative of the incorrect behavior of the media that identify with “those in charge”, despite the fact that Official Letter No. 549 of the Minvu was sent to all of them, none of them referred to it.
More than one person might wonder why this prior censorship and our answer is for the simple reason that making it known meant accrediting the corruption prevailing in that commune, during the period in which the mayor was a well-known UDI politician. Also, if we were to proceed with a certain degree of naivety, there would be the remote possibility that the journalists of these media have not understood the technical-legal content of such Office, since this way they would be freed from being mere instruments of the influential economic power.
Related to the above, some media outlets have reported that the well-known real estate company Fundamenta, the same one that accused Judge Sergio Muñoz a couple of years ago, will carry out a new construction project of several high-rise buildings that include small apartments of between 30 and 50 m2 in the commune of Ñuñoa, with an investment of around US$ 100 million.
Groups of neighbors in the sector made up of, among others, the streets of Sweden, Sucre, Simón Bolívar and Chile España, have told us that said business is not owned by Fundamenta, but rather by the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ, known by its faithful as the Passionists, a religious institution that obtained on 10/01/2025 from the respective Directorate of Municipal Works (DOM) the preliminary project permit No. 18,245 m2, with address Simón Bolívar 3010, the aforementioned residential towers.
There is the old neoclassical-style parish, Santa Gema Galgani, designed more than 100 years ago by the renowned Spanish architect, José Forteza, which was inaugurated for the Catholic faithful in 1906. Despite its undeniable heritage value, the Council of National Monuments has never protected it and therefore, the ad portas business will be possible. The large urban land, with the Internal Revenue Service (SII) No. 836-01/05, has a tax valuation of $12,772,077,639, exempt from the payment of real estate contributions, in accordance with the destination of worship, culture and education that its facilities have.
To make the investment possible, which we assume will be provided by Fundamenta’s partners, a few residential houses and the school of the same name must necessarily be demolished, which for many years has provided basic and secondary quality education, a leading educational institution that a year ago, for obvious reasons, stopped operating.
The central nave of the church will remain and according to Wikileaks, the immense property was donated by the Gandarillas family to the congregation, which will now be transformed into a kind of family office that rents apartments, noting that the promoter of this lucrative commercial activity is the Colombian citizen, known as the “reverend father”, Germán Méndez Cortés, who is proceeding with singular mastery in the processing of permits in the municipality of Ñuñoa and with Fundamenta partners.
As a curious fact, Mayor Sebastián Sichel has not had time to receive the neighbors in his office to review the consequences that they will have due to the project in question, which is being analyzed as a simple “Declaration” in the Environmental Impact Assessment System (SEIA). Everyone should know, starting with the mayor, that, in accordance with article 11 of Law No. 19,300, this commercial initiative must be evaluated as a “Study”, with authentic and effective citizen participation. In this way, the towers that will soon have the respective building permit could be socially legitimized.
In conclusion, it must be understood that the omission of the truth is a practice that exists throughout the world, although in developed countries to a lesser extent, and those who use it the most are those private individuals who, with privileged information, taking advantage of their good relations with the politicians in power, take advantage in the different markets and therefore there is a growing concentration of wealth.
Finally, in these Christmas holidays, we hope that the old man from Easter will be very generous to all readers, including the members of Fundamenta, the priests of the congregation, the neighbors of the neighborhood who will support the towers and those who have an aversion to fair play in the management of the news they publish.
