The Tías City Council has sanctioned 9 establishments (bars, kiosks or stalls) for selling alcohol to minors during the celebration of the recent festivities of Carmen, patron saint of La Tiñosa and Puerto del Carmen.
This was announced this Thursday by the mayor of Tías, Pancho Hernández, at a press conference in which he was accompanied by the Councilor for Festivities, Francisco Javier Aparicio Betancort, the chief officer of the Local Police, Víctor Celso Betancort, the coordinator of Civil Protection of Tías, Tomás Ramírez, the representative of Emerlan, Ginés Cedrés, and the technical writer of the Self-Protection Plan for the patron saint festivities of Carmen.
The first mayor of Tías has taken stock of the 15 days of festivities in La Tiñosa, in which a Self-Protection Plan was applied that included special actions in the area of child protection and prevention of alcohol consumption, which have not been without controversy.
In his appearance, the government group has defended that thanks to these measures "it has been possible to considerably reduce incidents involving minors due to alcohol, and for the first time in many years, transfers of minors due to alcohol poisoning have been avoided, as has happened in previous years."
Alcohol consumption in public places and disturbance of public order
According to the report of the services of the actions of the Local Police of Tías, during these days of festivities in La Tiñosa, 18 minors were identified for alcohol consumption in public places, 13 actions were carried out for disturbance of public order and two knives were seized. In addition, according to the City Council, the videos from the security cameras "allowed the identification of a 15-year-old girl, with drugs for consumption and sale, who was with her father and legal guardian."
Regarding the controversial action of the Civil Guard officers on the first day of the open-air dance, when families with children were expelled from the premises, the technical writer of the Self-Protection Plan, the industrial technical engineer Raquel Belén Díaz Castro, explains in her report that "on Friday, August 1, there is a delay in the start of the open-air dance, since some of the stalls located in the area have not removed all the tables, metal chairs, wooden benches and continued selling drinks in glass containers."
According to that report, "only two stalls ignored the condition of removing this type of service at the beginning of the open-air dance (as these facilities are inside the El Varadero square, where the open-air dances are held)", so the Civil Guard did not allow the event to begin, and their removal and the departure of minors from the open-air dance area was requested, "in compliance with the Canary Islands Law."
In his speech during the press conference, the mayor of Tías regretted these incidents, and asked the opposition parties in the City Council (CC and PSOE) "to stop attributing the decision of the Civil Guard's action to Tías and its mayor." "These councilors, who swore the Constitution, should know that these agents belong to a State Security force that acts ex officio, enforcing the law, and that no mayor in this country has the power and command over the Civil Guard officers," he said.
Pancho Hernández does not understand that these groups in the opposition "criticize that these laws are enforced in Tías, when in municipalities where the Canarian Coalition governs, such as Haría, or in others governed by the PSOE, such as Candelaria (Tenerife), they apply these measures to protect minors."