Unease. That is the atmosphere that is breathed among a large part of Lanzarote's business community given the possibility that the Spínola Group opens the doors of a large area in the Arrecife neighborhood of Argana Baja, next to the road that leads to San Bartolomé. There, in the last year, a large industrial warehouse has been built, whose current appearance indicates that, more than a commercial purpose, the building is designed to house a shopping center. Underground parking, elevators in sight and a wide and open design in the front are hallmarks of large commercial areas. But officially nobody knows anything.
Meanwhile, the Arrecife City Council has been requested, through a petition endorsed by several business associations integrated in Felapyme, and in which signatures such as those of Alfredo Villalba and Alberto Morales appear, a copy of the file that includes the building permit granted to the Spínola Group, belonging to the president of the Lanzarote Chamber of Commerce, Eduardo Spínola, to build the warehouse that may become a shopping center. In addition, they want to see the map of the area that includes the current Urban Planning Plan of the capital, both documents with the intention of corroborating the legality of the works.
The lost project
However, an important part of the file of that license does not appear. According to the former Councilor for Urban Planning of Arrecife, Nuria Cabrera, the initial construction project was modified several times. The documents of the last of these modifications have not been found in the City Council. Nuria Cabrera assures that she looked for the last project of the warehouse at the beginning of last November, when she prepared a requirement for the urban planning technicians of the City Council to visit the works to see if they conformed or not to the license granted, in order for them to make a report.
The technicians visited the Argana warehouse, but the report was not made. "I never saw that report because the technicians needed to see what the license allowed by seeing the last modified project", says Nuria Cabrera, who requested a copy of the lost project through the Cabildo without obtaining results and finally resorted to theCollege of Architects, so that they would provide the last modification."I left it there", concludes the councilor. A few weeks later she left the Government Group of the City Council together with her colleagues from the Socialist Party.
From the area of Classified Activities of the City Council, the corresponding permit has been granted, in which the more than 2,000 square meters of the building are recorded and by which the technical characteristics of the building are regulated, when it is going to develop an "unhealthy, annoying and dangerous activity", explains the councilor of the area, Luis Morales, who clarifies that this type of permit is needed "even by a clothing store with air conditioning". In any case, according to Luis Morales, "that license is worthless if it does not go with the first occupancy license".
Discontent in the business community
It seems that the unease over the possible opening of a large area extends even to some business owners who attended the same electoral list as Eduardo Spínola to the elections of the Chamber of Commerce, as is the case of Alberto Morales. And although he holds a chamber position next to Eduardo Spínola, Morales, representative of the Arrecife Zona Centro association, is one of the signatories of the request for the warehouse file. In any case, neither Morales nor the president of Felapyme, Alfredo Villalba, wanted to make statements about the feeling of Lanzarote's business community that has led them to want to know more about the license of this warehouse.
But the City Council is not the only institution to which these business owners have turned, because they have also knocked on the door of the General Directorate of Commerce of the Canary Islands to find out if the Spínolas have requested the specific commercial license. A license that they will only request from the regional government if their intention is to open a large area. "There are licenses for classified activities that the City Council gives, but those destined for large areas are a matter for the Government of the Canary Islands", points out the former Councilor for Urban Planning of Arrecife.
