The Island Plan of Territorial Management of Lanzarote (PIOT) celebrates 30 years of life these days. It was the first in the Canary Islands and came to put order in the landscape and environmental deterioration caused by the excessive and uncontrolled tourist growth that the island suffered at that time, which led our remembered César Manrique to raise the cry to the sky on several occasions.
As a territorial planning instrument that comprehensively orders the urbanism of the island, the PIOT of Lanzarote became a sign of identity of the socialists promoted under the presidency of Enrique Pérez Parrilla (1987-1991), entering into force after a unanimous provisional approval by the Plenary of the Cabildo. It cost, but consensus was achieved, a task in which the drafter of the PIOT, Fernando Prats Palazuelo, excelled.
It is not very difficult to imagine what the island would be like now without the PIOT. Let's just think for a moment that it annulled about twenty urban plans, declassified more than 250,000 tourist places and protected the whole of the island territory. It also established a maximum ceiling for the growth of tourist and residential places in tourist areas, as well as an annual rate to reach it.
The PIOT was ahead of its time by setting the concept of load capacity from the territorial point of view, regulating the quantity and quality of tourism, and, since then, the island has been conceived as a whole and not as the sum of seven municipalities. As if that were not enough, no new partial plans for tourist purposes have been approved in Lanzarote since 1991.
But, at the same time that we must keep in mind what the PIOT has meant, after so long of its validity the time has come to revise it to have a new Island Plan of Ordering of Lanzarote (PIOL). We must design the PIOL of the future based on a new and broad consensus from the certainty that we already have a basic territorial model of the island, and that it was defined 30 years ago.
It is also not difficult to imagine what the new PIOL should be like. We know that mass tourism is not the solution and that we cannot grow indefinitely, so I am convinced that the new PIOL must respect the model established in 1991 and establish new measures that order the territory. But, at the same time, it must promote a diversified economic development compatible with the protection of our fragile landscape.
Our efforts now focus on the recovery of tourism, economic activity and employment so that companies and families affected by the pandemic regain their vital pulse. But we must begin to focus our attention on a new PIOL, learning from the breaches that are still dragging on and re-establishing the violated urban and territorial legality.
María Dolores Corujo Berriel, President of the Cabildo de Lanzarote
