The Councilor for Historical Heritage of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Ariagona González, has sent a personal communication to the Mayor of Arrecife, Astrid Pérez, officially forwarding "the list of properties with heritage values that exist in said municipality".
"We trust that from this communication, Arrecife will take into account the existence of heritage values when processing urban planning licenses in the properties included in the list, avoiding creating problems for the owners of the licenses and opting for dialogue and not for sterile conflicts", says the councilor.
From the Cabildo they point out that said list has been prepared by the Historical Heritage Service of the Cabildo, and coincides in its majority “with the properties included by the City Council itself in the 2008 Catalog, annulled due to procedural aspects, and in the one initially approved in 2016, which never came to fruition”.
“The Municipal Catalog, in force since 2004, only contains 19 properties, a figure that does not reflect the reality of Arrecife's architectural heritage at all and the City Council itself is aware of this circumstance, because it has tried to revise it on several occasions with a list of properties very similar to the one we have communicated”, the councilor has warned.
Ariagona González has explained that this list of properties with heritage values has been communicated to the City Council "on several occasions since 2017" and, however, she assures that the demolition or construction license files "continue to be reported without taking into account the existence of the communicated heritage values".
“In no case have we intended to impose the Cabildo's criteria, since municipal technicians may hold a different criterion. What corresponds in case of discrepancy is that the technicians clearly report their contradictory assessment and, from there, that the corresponding decision be made, but never omitting the existence of the Cabildo's report”, Ariagona González pointed out.
The councilor has explained that it has been detected that in some of the licenses granted by the Local Government Board "no reference is made to the existence of previously communicated heritage values", so it has been considered appropriate "to inform the mayor of the aforementioned list of properties".
On the other hand, the councilor has explained that the consideration of these heritage values does not mean that "nothing can be done", nor that "the improvement of Arrecife is blocked", it is only about "respecting certain conservation guidelines at all times".
