The PSOE senator for Lanzarote, Manuel Fajardo Palarea, spoke this Thursday on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero to explain the situation of some residents of La Graciosa, who are receiving requests from the Treasury to pay various amounts of money or justify why part of their land invades the state public domain.
Specifically, the State is asking them for 394 euros for each square meter of public land occupied in a previous request or to submit the document that justifies the ownership of the land. "There are people who are being claimed 2,000 euros and there are others who are being claimed more because they have theoretically occupied more than 100 meters," said Fajardo Palarea.
This situation dates back to November 7, 2006, when the Autonomous National Parks Agency approved a new demarcation on the lands of the eighth island.
Homes have been built on these publicly owned lands, and there are also agricultural exploitations of the residents of La Graciosa.
"When the demarcation is made, the Teguise City Council does absolutely nothing," the senator said during his radio intervention. Now the State is asking the residents to pay for the occupied land in a conflict that has lasted for eight years.
The role of the Teguise City Council
It was not until November 2016, ten years after the approval of the demarcation, when some residents of La Graciosa residing in Caleta de Sebo were required by the State Heritage Area to regularize their legal situation by purchasing the occupied surface. Then the Teguise City Council asked to "suspend the term granted" until the situation was clarified.
The Teguise City Council, already under the mayoralty of Oswaldo Betancort (CC), requested the State to "solve the cadastral error of some properties." The consistory maintained that it had "topographic studies" that showed that it was the State that was wrong in the demarcations.
Palarea explained that the Government of Mariano Rajoy twice requested the documentation from the Teguise City Council to solve the problem of the demarcations in La Graciosa, but they did not receive a response. In addition, for the third time in 2018, the State took steps to try to resolve the situation.
However, Fajardo Palarea has assured that Teguise never delivered those documents to the Government of Spain nor attended to the requests to verify in situ the demarcation.
"I am surprised that the current president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, who was mayor of Teguise, somehow calls himself a guarantor to save the rights of the citizens of La Graciosa affected. When what has really happened is that it was the Teguise City Council itself [in 2016], I have the documentary proof, that did not help at all to fix this issue," Palarea stressed during his intervention in the morning show Buenos días, Lanzarote.
"Let's imagine that it's us, that I say they have made a mistake in this and I have the document that proves it and you ask me for it and I don't give it to you," exemplified the senator for Lanzarote.
Three years later in 2019, the senator of the Popular Party for Lanzarote, Joel Delgado, required Oswaldo Betancort to send those topographic studies that he had announced and that, "according to sources from the Ministry" were not on record in the Department.
Already in January 2020, the then senator for the Canary Islands Autonomous Community, Fernando Clavijo (CC), urged the Government of Spain of Mariano Rajoy (PP) to review the demarcation marked by National Parks in La Graciosa in 2006, 14 years ago.
"Now, after the revision of that demarcation carried out in 2006, there are regularization files that supposedly invade plots of state ownership," said Fernando Clavijo at the time. At that time, there were more than 40 residents affected by this situation.
Fajardo Palarea has assured that Clavijo "let die" that initiative in the Senate, which did not go ahead. The current Canary president asked the State to return to the delimitations of 1965 and the mayor of Teguise at that time, Oswaldo Betancort (CC), again attributed the situation to "an error of the General Directorate of State Heritage."
"Those who did not deliver the documentation that the State required now turn out to be at the forefront of the defense, but let's see, the two things cannot be at the same time," the senator concluded.
