The substandard housing grows in a concrete skeleton of Lanzarote amid a housing crisis

Wooden pallets form a kind of flimsy wall between columns of a concrete skeleton. Outside, several plastic chairs, a container, and a clothesline. People sleeping in tents, others raising sheets to shield themselves from the wind. Around them, tourists strolling along the avenue between large hotels in one of Lanzarote's main tourist areas, Costa Teguise.

The mayor of Teguise, Olivia Duque (Coalición Canaria), spoke on Tuesday morning on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero to explain the situation of this concrete skeleton in the coastal town. Specifically, the one on plot 216, which, as La Voz reported a few months ago, is in a process of urban legalization.

In recent weeks, this space, which has been part of Lanzarote's most controversial landscape for 21 years without a solution, has resurfaced because several shantytowns have proliferated inside it.

Lanzarote has been immersed for years in an unprecedented housing crisis, pressured by the scarcity of long-term rental housing and ever-increasing prices.

Sanctioning proceedings against the people living in the skeleton

Duque explained during her radio appearance that the Teguise City Council has opened sanctioning proceedings for an urban offense against the people living in this concrete skeleton for "enclosure works." "We are proceeding from an urban planning perspective; we have police reports," she detailed.

For the moment, the council has asked the people living on the plot not to continue enclosing parts of this concrete skeleton. "We are going to try to prevent the skeleton from continuing to be fitted out," the Teguise official insisted.

Furthermore, the council has announced that it will carry out the corresponding technical and legal reports so that, in the event that the enclosures continue to be made, the works can be "stopped and sealed." Otherwise, Duque stated that "we will enter with municipal personnel, with police, to remove whatever is there."

"We have an occupation law that protects these people, therefore, we cannot go against that," Duque insisted.

Meanwhile, the mayor has announced that they will also meet with the company so that they put up security or try to "remove those people" and improve the fencing. On different occasions, the PSOE of Teguise has demanded that the City Council take measures regarding the deficiencies in the closure of this fencing, where there have been several accidents.

Situation of the urbanistic skeleton

The concrete skeleton works were halted by the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands in 2005, 21 years ago. That judicial ruling opened the way to demolish the construction or begin its legalization.

In 2020, fifteen years after that halt, the developer asked the Teguise City Council to initiate the procedure to modify the General Plan and convert plot 216 into a hotel with 500 accommodation places.

In January 2022, after decades of abandonment and without executing the sentence, the then mayor of Teguise, Oswaldo Betancort (CC), signed a decree to initiate the minor modification proceeding of the Teguise General Plan and achieve the legalization of the skeleton. Said sentence stated that "the property had to demolish it or could legalize it, and the property opted to legalize it because the City Council told it at the time that, indeed, it could be legalized."

Currently, the Teguise Government Group, made up of Coalición Canaria, the Partido Popular, and the former councilor from Vox, continues with the procedures to legalize the construction, increase its accommodation places, and allow a four-story hotel to be built.

Duque has indicated that this has been "the only specific modification of the General Plan," which is already "in the last part of that modification," and that an agreement will then be signed with the property.

"We cannot demolish it because there is no demolition order," he insisted.