It's not about whether Lanzarote needs more shopping centers or not. When Felapyme decides to go public to denounce the irregularities surrounding the construction of Eduardo Spínola's large surface area, ...
It's not about whether Lanzarote needs more shopping centers or not. When Felapyme decides to go public to denounce the irregularities surrounding the construction of Eduardo Spínola's large surface area, obviously one of its objectives is to protect the businessmen it represents, but the underlying problem goes far beyond that. The real key is that if laws exist, they must exist for everyone.
Because what is unacceptable is that, for example, large chains that could really have brought better prices and products to Lanzarote continue to find a thousand obstacles to establish themselves here, while the second large shopping center on the island is being built through the back door, and again in the same hands, those of Eduardo Spínola.
And all this, with a license granted two decades ago to build a warehouse and a parking lot, which is light years away from what has actually been built. And the "warehouse" has 11,000 square meters and 24 commercial premises, although it lacks the relevant licenses from the Government of the Canary Islands, from the Arrecife City Council itself, which denied the last permit because the executed project did not conform to the one initially authorized, and neither did the Cabildo de Lanzarote, which would have a lot to say in this given that it is an infrastructure that would influence the entire island.
In fact, things as basic as a study of the impact that such an installation would have on traffic in Argana, considering the especially serious fact that it is located next to the General Hospital, have not been carried out. Why? Because in theory, a large shopping center was not going to be built, but a warehouse.
However, for months it had been evident that this warehouse was far from being a simple warehouse. There has been no shortage of clues: the very size of the warehouse, the escalators that began to be guessed as construction progressed... and finally, for weeks now, the huge signs that welcome you to "Argana Centro". Too many signs for the institutions involved not to have taken action on the matter or defined their position.
For this reason, Felapyme has decided to jump into the arena to denounce this situation, given the widespread fear that permits or last-minute authorizations will finally appear that will allow the regularization of a warehouse surrounded by controversy. And that is precisely what cannot be allowed, because Lanzarote cannot continue to be planned on the basis of faits accomplis. What is wrong for a hotel or an apartment complex, which have often proliferated with licenses that are later being declared illegal by the Justice, is also wrong for a shopping center. And the longer it takes to put a stop to the situation, the more difficult it is to resolve it.
Therefore, that philosophy that some promoters seem to know so well, who in many cases have had the complicity of town councils such as Yaiza, has to end at some point, and now the Arrecife government group has the opportunity to do so. Because as long as the idea continues to be promoted that there are those who can build hotels, houses, large surfaces or empires without following the channels that are obligatory for the rest of mortals, the island will continue to not move forward.
If a shopping center is needed, it is not a businessman who should decide where, how, when and in whose hands, no matter how much his name is Eduardo Spínola. In fact, for being called Eduardo Spínola and being president of the Lanzarote Chamber of Commerce, he should be even more scrupulous in complying with the rules and the law.
And it is not about making crusades against large surfaces, like the one he himself undertook when someone else was trying to build one in Valterra, but simply about finally transmitting the message that the rules are the same for everyone. And if a neighbor cannot build a wall in his house or a chalet cannot be built where it had been said that a dog house was going to be built, neither can a warehouse be magically transformed into the second largest shopping center on the island.
Of course, many Lanzarote consumers will want to see the offer of shops and large surfaces expanded, but if what is going to be gained is another Deiland or another Atlántida Shopping Center, both owned by Spínola, in addition to a serious risk of collapsing traffic in the area of the General Hospital, where ambulances must access daily, and all this in dim light and without either the City Council or the businessman in question having been able to come out to explain with what authorizations such a work has been allowed to be built, the truth is that society does not gain at all with this, but a person, or a business group.