The spokesperson for Coalición Canaria in the Tías City Council, Amado Vizcaíno, has lashed out at the mayor, José Juan Cruz, for attempting to push through, in an Extraordinary and Urgent Plenary Session, the III Plan for the Modernization, Improvement, and Increase of Competitiveness of Puerto del Carmen through a procedure he described as "a democratic outrage" and "a lack of respect for the institution and for all the residents of the municipality".
Vizcaíno has denounced that the governing group intends for the Corporation to "approve one of the most important urban planning documents for the future of Puerto del Carmen with less than 24 hours to study documentation of enormous complexity, using the proximity of the holidays as an excuse".
"The holidays of public officials are not an unforeseen emergency. They are something that has been known for months. What a mayor cannot do is turn his lack of planning into an excuse to curtail the rights of the opposition and force us to vote blindly on a document that will condition the future of Puerto del Carmen for decades," he states.
The nationalist spokesperson maintained during the plenary session that the convocation "violated the right of the opposition groups to carry out their oversight work with all guarantees and recalled that the urgency of a plenary session must respond to exceptional circumstances, never to the political need of the government to accelerate the processing of a file, causing its nullity under these circumstances, should any affected party challenge this plan".
But, in addition to questioning the methods, Coalición Canaria assures that the content of the file itself "presents serious technical and legal deficiencies that, in the opinion of the party, made it impossible to support its approval".
Vizcaíno denounced that the file submitted for voting lacked essential documentation, including the legality control report from the Government of the Canary Islands to which the municipal file itself refers, "preventing us from verifying what observations the regional administration made and whether they had actually been corrected". "They asked us to vote on an incomplete file. That is not transparency; it is concealment of information," he points out.
During the plenary debate, the nationalist spokesperson also warned that the document incorporates urban planning modifications that, as he argued, could generate "enormous legal uncertainty for the City Council, open the door to future millionaire claims, and seriously compromise the economic interests of the municipality".
Among other issues, he questioned the situation of the Aquarius Shopping Center, considering that the Plan intends to cover actions that are already being executed before its approval.
As he explained, to date, only a minor works license exists for actions in common areas. However, as he denounced during the plenary session, the works currently being executed "clearly exceed the scope of said license".
Likewise, he warned of the consequences that the elimination of the road planned on Bufaderos street could have, considering that this modification ignores that said road has been contemplated in the municipality's General Plan since 2005 and that its necessity was subsequently ratified in the 2011 Modernization Plan. Furthermore, he recalled that the City Council has already carried out expropriations linked to the execution of this road, so its elimination "could open the door for affected owners to request the reversion of those lands, with the consequent economic risk for municipal coffers".
In the same way, he criticized the "lack of legal guarantees" in the planning of the area of the old DAOS school, where the Cabildo of Lanzarote proposes a project of great interest in Social Welfare. As he explained, the proposal contemplates the modification of a general system and the creation of road access through a private plot, even though the City Council would not have proven availability of those lands, which, moreover, are not included in the municipal inventory of assets.
On the other hand, Vizcaíno criticized another of the actions that, in his opinion, the municipal government boasts about: the reclassification of 149,000 square meters of land for its incorporation into the municipal heritage. As he explained, to carry out this operation, it would be necessary to declassify a plot of equivalent surface area. However, he warned that the City Council only owns 64% of the lands proposed for this compensation, while the rest belongs to other owners.
In this regard, he warned that the landowners could claim the annulment of the operation due to the infringement of their rights over the plot, a situation that, as he denounced, arises from the mayor's insistence on favoring the interests of a private owner by reclassifying the rest of the land for commercial use.
For Coalición Canaria, it is "unheard of" that a document of such importance was intended to be approved "at full speed," without incorporating all the necessary documentation and without offering sufficient time for the councilors to rigorously analyze a file of hundreds of pages.
“The urban planning of a municipality cannot be managed by improvisation, nor through hastily convened plenary sessions to try to push through files that affect the present and future of Puerto del Carmen. Governing is not about running to arrive first, but about doing things well,” stated Vizcaíno.
The spokesperson concluded by assuring that Coalición Canaria "will continue to exercise a firm and vigilant opposition to prevent decisions of enormous importance from being made without transparency, without legal certainty, and without the respect that both the Corporation and the residents of Tías deserve.”
Furthermore, he recalled that, with this new plan, “the only thing the PSOE of Lanzarote seeks once again is to facilitate the construction of new hotels and their expansion, by changing the use of residential land to tourist use.” In his opinion, this is “another contradiction between the mayor's discourse and his own actions.”
In this regard, he also questioned the mayor's assertions that the new planning does not contemplate the creation of new accommodation places. As he pointed out, the latest report expressly recognizes a programmed population growth by the PMM/PC3 of 3,774 people, corresponding to accommodation and residential places, as stated in section 7.8.4 of the Report.
“This cannot happen again. When we talk about the main economic engine of the municipality, the minimum requirement is rigor, legality, and transparency. Everything else constitutes political irresponsibility that Tías cannot afford,” he concluded.
Lastly, he demanded that the mayor focus his efforts "on the real needs of the residents" and urgently address the municipality's General Plan, which has remained "tucked away" since 2019. In this regard, he claimed that "the implementation of new housing developments should be prioritized over the 'rush' to facilitate the construction of new hotels."
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