The nationalist party denounces that the Tías City Council maintains inactive tourist beds in the Modernization Plan with the intention of reactivating them, despite proclaiming a policy of containing growth.
Coalición Canaria (CC) Lanzarote y La Graciosa accuses the PSOE of deliberately deceiving citizens after rejecting in the last plenary session of the Tías City Council the motion of CC in which the Canarian nationalist party requested the definitive elimination of 6,622 tourist beds in Puerto del Carmen that, although they are not currently in operation, are still listed as authorized in the Modernization Plan of Puerto del Carmen (Memory of the Plan is attached).
The motion, presented by the nationalist spokesperson Amado Vizcaíno, urged the municipal government to lead by example and remove those non-operational beds from the accommodation ceiling. In response, the socialist mayor José Juan Cruz has publicly disseminated a letter that, according to the island secretary of CC, Pedro San Ginés, "is plagued with lies and gross manipulations with the aim of sustaining a discourse of containment of tourist growth that neither his party nor his government practice in reality."
One of the mayor's statements maintains that the III Modernization Plan of Puerto del Carmen does not contemplate a single new bed, which San Ginés describes as false: "The III Modernization Plan of Puerto del Carmen contemplates putting back on the market the 6,622 more beds than are currently in operation, without reducing at any time the ceiling set in the Island Planning Plan of Lanzarote (PIOL) of 1991."
"What it does not contemplate" -adds San Ginés- "are more beds than it had as a limit in the PIOL, although in principle it also did so with just over 1,000 more beds and it was the Cabildo itself that from the Island Plan Office warned and urged the City Council to correct it downwards. And now the III Modernization Plan contemplates an accommodation ceiling of authorized or permitted beds identical to the one that the PIOL had, that is, 6,645 more than those that are currently in operation as can be seen from its own Memory" (an extract from the aforementioned Memory is attached).
6,622 beds removed from the system: false
Likewise, the PSOE assures that "the 6,622 beds that are mentioned have already been deregistered, eliminating them from the system", something that Coalición Canaria also flatly denies. "These beds will at most be temporarily deregistered or simply not operational, but in no case have they been eliminated as authorized beds -understand permitted- according to their own Plan. The objective of the PSOE is to put them back on the market, even through the construction of new tourist complexes on other land", warns San Ginés.
"That is, José Juan Cruz lies when he affirms that those beds have been eliminated from the system, because the reality is that in any case they have only temporarily deregistered them, but they maintain them in the system to put them back on the market under the pretext that they do not effectively exceed the accommodation ceiling contemplated in the PIOL of 91, which CC proposes to reduce either in the Modernization Plan itself or by requesting the Cabildo to do so", he adds.
"No will to reduce beds"
"Although it is true that the Land Law of 2017 does not expressly establish that it is up to the municipal planning to set the bed ceiling, it can be deduced from its reading that this is the case because the Island Plan only attributes to it the establishment of criteria (article 96.2: "Setting criteria to estimate the tourist and/or residential carrying capacity of the different parts of the territory and of the island as a whole) when previously it expressly attributed to it the competence to specify the limit of beds", continues San Ginés.
"Although independently of that question" -he continues- "what really matters is that the PSOE has not shown the slightest will to reduce beds nor has it requested the Cabildo to do so. On the contrary, its determination to register 6,622 new beds that are not currently operational is clear, hiding it from the population."
In this sense, the municipal spokesperson of CC in the Tías City Council, Amado Vizcaíno, affirms that "the Memory of the III Modernization Plan of Puerto del Carmen unmasks the PSOE and demonstrates the falsehood of its supposed commitment to containing growth. No matter how much they try to continue deceiving citizens with that false story, the Modernization Plan that they are processing demonstrates that the socialists are doing just the opposite", he adds.
"Public debate"
For all these reasons, the island secretary of CC considers that "the time has come for the PSOE to show its face" and proposes a public debate with the presence of urban planners, in which it is clarified "who has the real competence to set tourist limits" and what real effects the plan that the Tías City Council promotes will have. "We do it from the certainty that they will not accept it, because their false story would not withstand a rigorous technical analysis and they will prefer to remain in the conservationist posturing to which the PSOE has accustomed us", concludes San Ginés.
