Marina Rubicon (Playa Blanca, Lanzarote)

A marina still fighting over its own legal foundations

The underlying history, independently documented by two separate Canarian news outlets a decade apart, is that construction began in August 2000 without any municipal permit, the operator applied for a licence only in March 2003 after two and a half years of unauthorised building, and received it just six days later, after a businessman who had opposed the project was paid to withdraw his objections and all related legal cases were then dismissed.

A separate corruption investigation, the 2010 Yate case, reinvestigated the same licensing history as part of a wider probe into Playa Blanca development. None of this has closed the marina or removed a single berth, but it is a genuinely open legal question in 2026, not settled history, and a buyer or investor with a longer horizon than a single season should weigh it accordingly.

What that means for an owner today

The case is aimed at the concession itself, held by the operating company Puerto Deportivo Rubicon SA, and at the regulator Puertos Canarios' inaction rather than at any individual berth holder, so the practical risk to an owner today is reputational and long-term rather than an immediate threat to a booked berth.

It is nonetheless the kind of fact this directory exists to surface rather than bury: an owner or a yard evaluating Marina Rubicon as a long-term Atlantic base should know the concession's legal footing is contested before signing an annual contract, not after.

A businessman who has traded at the marina since 2007 is currently suing the Canary Islands' own ports authority to force it to end Marina Rubicon's concession, arguing the 2017 court ruling already destroyed its legal basis.

How big is Marina Rubicon, depending on who you ask

That spread is wide enough, and consistent enough across independent sources, that it looks like a marina that has genuinely never settled on one public figure rather than one that simply has an outdated page somewhere; a captain planning a call above 50 metres should confirm the actual available berth directly with the marina rather than rely on any single published number.

What is consistent is the presence of a dedicated large-yacht dock separate from the main jetty, cranes and lift equipment, and dry-dock and bunkering services, which together read as a marina genuinely built for superyacht traffic rather than one stretching a resort marina's claims.

Arriving by sea

The marina's own booking system takes berth reservations directly online, a level of self-service several older Mediterranean marinas in this directory still do not offer, and the published rate table below covers the whole process from arrival to daily cost without requiring a phone call for anything up to 25 metres.

For anything larger, on the dedicated big-yacht dock, the marina's own site simply invites a direct enquiry rather than quoting a number, consistent with how most superyacht-scale docks in this directory are actually priced.

What a berth actually costs

That is a genuinely unusual level of published detail for a marina with any superyacht ambition at all, and it lets a buyer actually budget a season at Rubicon without a quote request, at least up to the 25 metre band the table covers.

Above that, on the marina's dedicated 50 metre-plus dock, no rate is published at all, so an owner of a larger yacht faces exactly the same price-on-application situation as at almost every other superyacht dock in this directory, just with a much better-documented small-yacht tariff sitting alongside it.

A village built for an evening ashore, not just a berth

That design brief, an entire retail village rather than a berthing facility with a restaurant attached, puts Rubicon in the same category as Marina di Varazze and Ocean Village elsewhere in this directory: a marina built as much for people staying ashore as for the boats themselves.

The Wednesday and Saturday pier market is a specific, fixed weekly event worth planning around for provisioning or simply an evening stroll, and it is the kind of small practical detail that never appears in the marina's own promotional copy.

Getting to the boat

Lanzarote Airport itself carries frequent connections to mainland Spain and a wide range of northern European cities, making Rubicon one of the more accessible Atlantic bases in this directory for an owner whose crew or guests are flying in from outside Spain.

The marina's own southern position, away from Lanzarote's more built-up northern resorts, also means a shorter transfer for anyone actually landing specifically to join a yacht rather than to holiday on the island first.

What is not published, and why it matters here specifically

That is a materially different kind of gap from a simple missing price: it is a live legal question about who holds the right to run the marina at all, and it is the single fact about Rubicon that most differentiates it from its otherwise similar neighbours at Puerto Calero and Marina Lanzarote on the same island.

None of this is a reason to avoid the marina today; it operates fully, reserves berths, publishes rates and runs its full village of restaurants and shops. It is a reason to ask the question before signing anything longer than a season, which is exactly the kind of thing this directory exists to flag rather than let a buyer discover later, and it is a genuinely different kind of caveat from the missing prices and disputed berth counts covered elsewhere on this page, since a rate can simply be requested while a concession's legal standing cannot be resolved by a phone call, and a captain who only wants a berth for a season has a very different exposure to that risk than an owner considering an annual contract or a purchase of berth tenure, which is precisely the distinction a buyer should draw out with the marina and, ideally, independent Spanish counsel before committing either way.

A second, later corruption inquiry

That a second, independent investigation years later returned to the same marina's paperwork says something on its own: it suggests the original licensing questions were never fully closed by the courts or by local authorities in the years between the marina's 2003 opening and the 2017 ruling.

None of the reporting the desk reviewed suggests the Yate case produced a separate criminal conviction specific to the marina itself, and it predates the current 2026 concession-termination case by well over a decade, so it should be read as part of a long, unresolved history rather than a live proceeding in its own right.

Diving, watersports and the wider marina offer

That is consistent with Rubicon's positioning across the sources reviewed for this page as a leisure destination in its own right rather than purely a technical berthing stop, reinforced by the marina's own description of itself as a sports, commercial and leisure centre since its 2003 opening.

For an owner with family or guests aboard rather than a delivery crew alone, that on-site activity range is a genuine practical advantage over a marina offering only fuel, water and a chandlery.

The lifting and bunkering side, for the boats that need it

That places Rubicon among the more technically equipped Atlantic marinas in this directory, built to actually service the larger yachts its own big-boat dock is designed to attract, rather than only berth them for the season.

As with the dock's own length and pricing, no independent account the desk could find names a specific lift tonnage or a completed refit job at Rubicon, so an owner planning technical work here should confirm current capability and availability directly with the marina rather than relying on the general service listing alone. That gap is worth flagging precisely because Rubicon otherwise publishes more operational detail than most Atlantic marinas of its size, which makes the silence around its actual lift and refit track record more conspicuous than it would be on a marina that publishes nothing at all.

Für wen: An owner who wants a real Atlantic base for Lanzarote and the Canaries, values a published rate card, and is comfortable that the marina's own legal foundations remain an open question rather than settled history