After more than 20 years of blockade, particular interests and political strategies that have prevented Arrecife from having a General Planning Plan, today we can say that our city is closer than ever to having a clear, fair and necessary regulatory framework for its development. It has not been an easy road, but perseverance and commitment to the general interest have paid off. We said it and we delivered, and we are moving decisively towards a more than necessary future.
It was under a government of the Canarian Coalition when the document that today, after more than 10 years of waiting, we validated for our City was initiated. At that time, a nationalist mayor Manolo Fajardo and his Councilor for Urban Planning, Samuel Martín, laid the foundations for this plan. And it is again a representative of the Canarian Coalition, my colleague and Councilor for Urban Planning, Maciot Cabrera, who has had the courage and determination to continue this process, closing his office to pressures, empty promises and failed attempts to stop this progress. His commitment to Arrecife is unquestionable and deserves the recognition of all those who aspire to a city with a defined course, with clear and equal rules of the game for all.
This achievement would not have been possible without the stability and support of the government group. Therefore, I want to thank our partners from the Popular Party and the mayor, Yonathan de León, for the trust placed and for understanding that the interest of the city must be above any political calculation. They have allowed this document to continue its course and that, finally, we can give Arrecife the regulatory framework it so badly needs to grow in an orderly, transparent manner and with legal certainty.
Arrecife cannot wait any longer. The lack of a General Plan has plunged our city into uncertainty, hindering investments, generating inequalities and slowing down its development. With this approval, we mark a before and after. We leave behind improvisation and open the door to a future with planning, with opportunities for all and with a city designed for its residents.
It is important to remember that those who have had the possibility of doing this before and have not wanted to do so are, precisely, those who always hide in their false accusations of speculation and deals or of working arbitrarily with our most precious asset. We have wanted to validate a basic document that improves the public infrastructures of our city, its mobility, solves the problems of the residents of the scattered areas of Güime and Las Vírgenes, and eliminates impurities that in other times opened unnecessary doors to legal weaknesses of the planning and allow me the joke "of the interest of law firms".
But this plan is only the beginning. We are already working on the approval of a catalog of heritage assets for our historical site and on Urban Rehabilitation Area projects that we will soon announce for our neighborhoods. Arrecife adopts a future strategy with this plan, and what we validate in this plenary session is only the legal framework on which to paint the Arrecife of the future. A sustainable city that looks at the sea from each of its neighborhoods and whose main objective is to improve the quality of life of its residents.
A separate section deserves to talk about housing in our capital. We want young people to have an opportunity to live and develop their lives in Arrecife, and for that it is necessary to develop the free land that remains in our city and allow growth in height, which is the only way to do it without consuming more territory. 5022 homes, 30% of them in the social sphere, will be the opportunities that this Plan will give to our young people and to those who have had to leave.
Arrecife to develop. We want Arrecife to be a living, comfortable, sustainable city in which we recover free spaces as meeting places for our residents.
We want a city that returns to focus on the paths of water and the recovery of degraded spaces as green lungs, which also provide a solution in the subsoil to the need for parking in many areas of the city. This document will bring the neighborhoods closer together and equalize the services that are presented in each of them, the lack of land should no longer be the excuse for the lack of public investment in the development of new infrastructures for our residents.
You will have heard me say it many times, but I will not tire of repeating it: the main enemies of the city and its development are precisely outside of it and its interests, as dark as they are distant, are not precisely in the document that we have validated today. The real interest in this plan is not within our city, but in not having it, so that "others" are the beneficiaries. Those who accuse us of using planning to favor a few have
493,000 reasons to bow to the interests of those who do not want new opportunities for our city. Those who in urban matters feel more comfortable in legal uncertainty, to be able to decide arbitrarily and without too many complications.
We say it loud and clear, with transparency: WE HAVE A PLAN FOR ARRECIFE. With it we present ourselves to the elections and we will take it to every corner of our city so that they know it and together we improve it. Consensus is a good way to reach the objective, but it cannot be the objective in itself, and even more so when there is a part that what it seeks in consensus is precisely the excuse. We will not allow the lessons of morality or politics from those who have led this city to the worst moments in its history and who have never been able to write, black on white, the model of city they want or defend.
This is the moment for Arrecife. Let's not let the past impose itself again. Let's continue to move forward with responsibility and with the certainty that we are building a better city for all.