The mayor of Tías, José Juan Cruz, "strongly" denounces the rejection of the Integrated Action Plan (PAI) presented by the Cabildo of Lanzarote to the EDUSI-FEDER 2021-2027 fund call and points to the island's president, Oswaldo Betancort, as responsible for an unprecedented situation by leaving the municipalities without the funds that legally correspond to them.
"Oswaldo Betancort has achieved something unprecedented: breaking the cooperation between the Cabildo and the municipalities, abandoning our neighbors. Tías, like the rest of the municipalities, cannot be held hostage by a policy based on excuses and broken promises," Cruz states.
The mayor recalls that the Municipal Cooperation Plan is a tool mandated by law, promoted by a socialist government to guarantee equitable financing among municipalities. Its elimination, without a real alternative, has jeopardized projects already planned in many city councils.
### "No plan, no funds"
"The president of the Cabildo withdrew the cooperation funds under the pretext that they would be compensated with those of the PAI. Now we know that this alternative does not exist. There is no plan, there are no funds, and those who pay the consequences are the municipalities, and with them their residents," he adds.
The mayor clarifies that the European funds currently managed by the Tías Town Council are not related to the Cabildo's PAI, but are the result of a project developed and presented by the town council itself, approved directly by the Government of Spain.
For his part, the first deputy mayor of Tías, Nicolás Saavedra, points out that “in the consistory we have funds because we did the work. Nobody gave us anything. The Cabildo has not delegated funds or projects to us. Our European financing responds to serious, rigorous, and autonomous planning,” he says.
For Saavedra, the chain of decisions made by the island government, formed by the Canarian Coalition and the Popular Party, demonstrates that "planning has been replaced by propaganda, and that Lanzarote is worse off today than it was a year ago."
"You can't govern with headlines. Management requires responsibility, commitment, and institutional respect, something that the president of the Cabildo has been unable to demonstrate. Today, due to his lack of management, the municipalities have been left unprotected, and that is unacceptable, as the residents of our municipality are being turned away," he concludes.
