The Councilor for Urban Planning of the Teguise City Council, Olivia Duque, has stated that the institution is putting "everything" on its part to provide a solution to Victoriano Hernández, a resident of La Graciosa who on Monday began a protest claiming a license to finish and divide his home.
However, the councilor has denied that this man has been waiting eight years for a response from the City Council, as he himself denounced, who claimed that the City Council had taken "1,550 days to finish a project" and that he had "spent more than 30,000 euros on renting a house."
"The process to legalize and divide it began in 2017," Duque stated, noting that it was "in August" of that year when the City Council received the license application. "Before that date, there is no application from Victoriano or his ex-wife," she said.
"Victoriano is an example of what the residents are going through"
The Councilor for Urban Planning has explained that what happened with Victoriano "is an example of what the residents of La Graciosa are going through," after the Supreme Court annulled the Master Plan for Use and Management of the Chinijo Archipelago at the end of 2017.
"The municipal technician who was assigned to La Graciosa understood at that time that there was the PRUG ruling that he could not report," Olivia Duque pointed out, noting that after that the City Council spent "all of 2018 and half of 2019" waiting for the Government of the Canary Islands to clarify to the City Council which planning should be applied.
This response, according to Duque, did not arrive until "May 2019" and in it "they said that it had to be the subsidiary regulations." "And at that moment, Victoriano was sent the letter that was sent to all the residents, telling them that they had to modify the project (to adapt it) to the subsidiary regulations," she added.
After that, the councilor explained that the project was modified and delivered to the College of Architects "to be reviewed." "And we are waiting for the College of Architects to send us the project, which is true that it was sent recently," she said.
And it is that, Olivia Duque has pointed out that this "also coincided with the fact that the municipal architect has been on leave due to illness practically since Covid." In addition, she has acknowledged some delay in the drafting of the project. "It is true that Victoriano availed himself of self-construction from minute one and this means that the municipal architect, of which we only have one, is the one who drafts the project, and that has made things take longer than normal," she stated.
"The steps that had to be taken have been taken"
In any case, Duque has defended that from the City Council "the steps that had to be taken have been taken". "I think Victoriano cannot say that he has not been attended to, that he has not been received and that all the cards have not been put on the table to try to solve the problem that existed from minute one," said Olivia Duque, who has stated that she has been receiving this resident since she assumed the Councilorship of Urban Planning.
"From June 2019 to today, every week, on Monday when I arrived at the City Council, the first thing I did was call the technician and see how Victoriano's issue was, try to speed it up," added the councilor.
In addition, the councilor has committed to ask for "speed" from the Department of Territorial Policy of the Government of the Canary Islands, which is who the project must be sent to once it receives the approval of the College of Architects to give the green light for the license.
"We cannot skip that rule. We are taking the legal steps that the regulations mark us right now, and it marks us that we have to send that project, as we have already sent more than 50 projects for them to report. But once we send it, we will try to argue that we are facing a delicate social situation of the person in question and we will ask for speed," concluded the Councilor for Urban Planning of the Teguise City Council.
