Plan to create a giant casino complex near Madrid have been axed because of disagreements between the developer and Spanish authorities.
US casino operator Las Vegas Sands has pulled out of the €21bn Eurovegas project after authorities in the Spanish capital refused to exempt the complex from the country's smoking laws or to lower the tax on gambling.
Promoters had promised that Eurovegas, which was to have comprised six casinos, 12 hotels and a shopping mall would create up to 250,000 jobs, directly and indirectly - a major selling point in Spain where the unemployment rate currently stands at 27%.
At a news conference after the government's weekly cabinet meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría said: "New conditions were put forward concerning taxes and legal protection ... which could not be taken on board by the administrations involved,"
"The government needs to preserve the general interests of all Spaniards," she said.
In a statement, Las Vegas Sands chief executive Sheldon Adelson (pictured, left) said: "While the government and many others have worked diligently on this effort, we do not see a path in which the criteria needed to move forward with this large-scale development can be reached.
"Developing integrated resorts in Europe has been a vision of mine for years, but there is a time and place for everything and right now our focus is on encouraging Asian countries, like Japan and Korea, to dramatically enhance their tourism offering through the development of integrated resorts there."
Madrid waged a long battle with Barcelona to secure the Eurovegas contract, but the project met with stiff opposition from the outset from several groups, including the Roman Catholic Church, which argued the casino complex would encourage prostitution and crime.
