Greenpeace said some 30 of its militants had unfurled banners demanding the demolition of the 20-storey, 411-room hotel.

The organisation argues the building has gone up in the park, near Nijar in Almeria province, "with the complicity of all administrative authorities" at the municipal, regional and national level.

The ecologists called on the Andalusian regional government to set in train the demolition of the "illegal" building.

According to Fernando Cabezon, the administrator of Azata, the firm building the hotel, "this is a subjective opinion of Greenpeace. No authority has spoken of illegality.

"The hotel is on municipal land at Carboneras, surrounded by natural land near the beach and the Cabo de Gata-Nijar natural park."

Cabezon said the hotel was not actually on the parkland and added that planning permission had been had been sought and granted before a 1988 law on preservation of the shoreline.

He added completion of the project, which he described as "very beautiful," was two months away.

Greenpeace maintains the project is "one of the biggest urban scandals on the Spanish shoreline."

The park is a rare stretch of Spanish shoreline untouched by the concrete tourism developments that characterise much of the rest of the country's coasts.

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