The first session of the Board of Directors of the Port Authority of Las Palmas (APLP) under the mandate of Emilio Mayoral, held this Friday in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, served to report on the recent ruling of the Puerto-Ciudad contest of Arrecife.
According to Manuel Fajardo Palarea, vice president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote and also one of the representatives of the Island on the Council, the Assembly of the provincial institution endorsed the ruling of the winning project, for whose materialization the first steps now have to be taken.
In the first place, the City Council of Arrecife and the Cabildo of Lanzarote "will have to take charge of smoothing out possible obstacles from the urban point of view."
The winning idea is authored by the Madrid firm Jerónimo Junquera Asociados, of whose project the jury highlights that it rationalizes the characteristics of the space of the urban front of the system of uses and spaces linked to the Port Authority, which recovers the quality of the reefs and which increases the surface area of the water sheet by 45,000 square meters, also freeing up a large public space of 123,000 square meters without building and integrating the pre-existing singular elements into it.
According to Fajardo, given the "citizen push for both the city and the port to modernize", and the unanimity with which the winning project was proclaimed, the participants agreed in the Council that the idea should materialize "without haste but without pauses".
Equitable distribution
As specified by the socialist representative for Lanzarote on the Board of Directors of the APLP, at the request of Manuel Fajardo Feo, Minister of Tourism of the Government of the Canary Islands, "what we hope is that when we talk about the port, the Port Authority does not only refer to that of Las Palmas, but to that of the three islands of the province to which the institution belongs."
For this reason, Fajardo Palarea hoped that when the APLP Management Plan is drafted, not only will large investments be dedicated to the Port of La Luz, but also, and equitably, these will be distributed between Puerto del Rosario and Los Mármoles.
Another proposal from Lanzarote on the Board of Directors was based on the inclusion of business representatives from the Island in the Assembly. "We intend that once the Chamber of Commerce of Lanzarote is consolidated, Lanzarote businessmen also have spokespersons here, just as those of Gran Canaria have," said Fajardo.
New stage of harmony
In this first Council chaired by Emilio Mayoral, in which the call and the bases for the exploitation of solid bulk plants in the Arrecife port under a public domain regime were also approved, in addition to a request from Unelco for the concession of infrastructures to provide coverage for a network exit, it became clear that a new stage was beginning.
Apparently, all the members of the Council participated in this new environment, including the Gran Canaria president of the PP, José Manuel Soria, who had not been too happy with the replacement of José Manuel Arnáiz by Mayoral.
Unclarified issues
Among some of the points of interest for Lanzarote that were expected to be discussed in this session but that were finally left in the inkwell, the controversy over the concession of the second crane in Los Marmoles stands out, after which the first awarded company, Terminal Marítima de Arrecife S.A., filed a contentious-administrative appeal with the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) at the end of September. In this regard, the Council limited itself to authorizing the use of public domain by the company Estibadora Los Mármoles S.L.
Other pending issues were the inability of the Arrecife port to supply sufficient water to cruise ships, the Barco-Museo project, as well as the management to alleviate the damage caused in the capital port after the passage of tropical storm Delta through Lanzarote, an aspect in which Fajardo pledged to act as a transmission belt in the Council of the requests of the [consignees->http://www.lavozdelanzarote.com/article.php3?id_article=4176].