Almost a year after the building was vacated due to security problems in its structure, the recovery of the Agustín de la Hoz House of Culture is a little closer. The Official Gazette of the Canary Islands publishes this Monday, November 6, the call for a public tender, through an open procedure and urgent processing, for the contracting of the rehabilitation work, which will have an execution period of 18 months.
The Minister of Tourism of the Government of the Canary Islands, Manuel Fajardo Feo, highlighted the importance of this work for Arrecife, which is part of the Tourism Infrastructure and Quality Plan. In addition, the Ministry emphasizes that in the last two years the highest degree of execution of this Plan has been recorded. Specifically, to date, a total of 130,464,702.02 euros has been invested, that is, about 22,000 million of the old pesetas, in beautifying the municipalities of the Islands.
One year closed
On November 16, 2005, the fifteen workers of the Agustín de la Hoz House of Culture were evicted after the first deputy mayor of the Arrecife City Council, Nuria Cabrera, signed a decree ordering the closure of the building once the capital's mayor, María Isabel Déniz, informed the councilor of the concern among the workers.
Although in principle a technical report did not reflect any danger of imminent ruin, the capital's Consistory did not want to take risks and decided to relocate the workers to other facilities, until the rehabilitation of the building was undertaken.
Since September 8, 2004, the Arrecife City Council requested the Ministry of Infrastructure, Transport and Housing of the Canary Islands Government for a subsidy to carry out the rehabilitation works of the House of Culture, whose project is in the Consistory itself. Now, and through the Ministry of Tourism and financed with resources from the European Regional Development Fund, the works will finally see the light and, once the works are awarded, in 18 months the House of Culture will be able to reopen its doors.
