Espino is "delighted" that José Francisco Reyes has commissioned his own plan, which he will welcome as long as it is not created to benefit "a group of businessmen"

Espino warns Yaiza that the Territorial Plan will put the general interests of the Island before any other project

The Councilor for Territorial Policy and Environment of the Cabildo, Carlos Espino, warned this Wednesday the mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, that the Special Territorial Plan that ...

November 2 2005 (21:39 WET)
Espino warns Yaiza that the Territorial Plan will prioritize the general interests of the Island over any other project
Espino warns Yaiza that the Territorial Plan will prioritize the general interests of the Island over any other project

The Councilor for Territorial Policy and Environment of the Cabildo, Carlos Espino, warned this Wednesday the mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, that the Special Territorial Plan being prepared by the team coordinated by Fernando Prats will serve to prioritize the general interests of the entire Island over the particular interests of any municipality, positively welcoming the southern Consistory's creation of its own work "as long as it does not benefit a few businessmen".

The government group of the Yaiza City Council approved in the extraordinary plenary session held last Monday the opening of a file to hire a multidisciplinary team that will develop the Territorial Tourism Plan of the municipality. The objective is to achieve its subsequent contribution and integration into the new document being prepared by the Cabildo, which by law must be completed before April of next year, as explained after the plenary session by the mayor himself, José Francisco Reyes. The multidisciplinary team will be composed of architects and urban planners of international projection, who must fulfill the objective of defining the new programming of the accommodation plant and the new public facilities, endowments, services, landscape and green spaces of the different urbanizations and tourist areas located in the south of the Island.

Carlos Espino, who did not have full knowledge of the information because he had been immersed in other matters these days, was a little surprised by the effort that the southern City Council is going to make. Once the details were explained in the Buenos Días program of Radio Lanzarote, he said that he is "delighted" to receive the project and to take a look at it when they finish it. However, he clarified that everything that is done will be welcome "as long as it is correct for the general interests of Lanzarote and not for a group of businessmen from Yaiza".

Considering that the team of urban planners coordinated by Fernando Prats is already working on the Special Territorial Plan for the entire Island, a Plan that aims, among other things, to declassify more than 25,000 beds, many people may think that what the southern Consistory is going to do, as recalled in the plenary session by the spokesperson for the Popular Party (PP), José Carlos Rojas, could be a useless expense, a double work without much sense. For the councilor, "the most wonderful thing about the case is that the mayor of Yaiza has realized that to do this type of thing, a multidisciplinary team has to be commissioned and not dedicate himself to reactivating licenses that were from the time of the conquest". "From the outset, that is interesting, because it seems that he has realized that the Territorial Plan has a function. Now, what we cannot forget is that it is up to the Cabildo to process it with consensus, with dialogue, with contributions from all the city councils, but putting the general interest of Lanzarote ahead of everything", he said emphatically, stressing that discrepancies are healthy as long as it is clear that the one who has to ensure that the rules chosen "by all" are applied is the Cabildo.

In this way, he recalled that the current government group has already reaffirmed at least twice its commitment to declassify beds, an issue already raised since the 2003 revision.

For her part, the spokesperson for the Party of Independents of Lanzarote (PIL) in the southern Consistory, Gladys Acuña, again justified her abstention and that of her colleagues in the plenary session, assuring that they are very clear that what is going to be done is nothing more than an alternative plan to that of the Cabildo because the mayor of Yaiza does not trust the drafting team that is preparing the Special Territorial Plan.

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