The Canary Islands Government yesterday gave a Slam the door to the largest projected tourist complex in Tenerife. The Governing Council rejected the modification of the urban planning necessary for the construction of the great luxury center in Punta de Abona, in the municipality of Arico, consisting of four five-star hotels with 2,985 beds, a large recreational park, a spa of thalassotherapy and a shopping center, and for which a private investment of more than 360 million euros was planned.
The main reasons given by the Canarian Government to stop this mega-project have to do with the protection of nature in this part of the Island: the project supposes “a potential effect on species cataloged in danger of extinction” such as the endemic beetle Pimelia canariensis – the same species that was about to stop a part of the works of the Port of Granadilla de Abona– and the sea pineapple Attraylis preauxiana, a shrub that grows in areas of the Tenerife coastline.
The hotel complex also poses a threat, according to the regional Executive, for species classified as vulnerable such as the Polygonum maritimum and Traganum moquinii plants, as well as for three habitats of community interest: the cliffs with endemic vegetation of the Macaronesian coasts, the mobile coastal dunes and the thermomediterranean and pre-stepe scrub. This is what warns a report issued by the Vice-Ministry for the Fight against Climate Change in April.
The Executive’s decision has meant un hard blow for the Arico City Council, which bases its main tourism expansion and job creation plans on this project by the promoter Playa de Arico SA, which envisaged the occupation of a space equivalent to 178 football fields in an area of the Arico coast with good natural conservation and without any tourist, commercial, or residential exploitation.
Breaches the Insular Plan
Another reason that the Governing Council argues for rejecting the proposed urban formula to accommodate this macro-complex – the suspension of the planning regulations for the area of Punta de Abona, which are subsidiary since the General Plan of Arico is still pending. approval by the Government of the Canary Islands itself – is that it “fails to comply with the determination of the Island Planning Plan regarding the scope of implementation of tourist uses.” «This entails going from acting only on municipal planning to suspending and modifying territorial determinations of interest and insular scope, which goes beyond the nature of the exceptional and precautionary intervention of the suspension measure and deserves further reflection that allows better monitoring and a high degree of consensus through the ordinary means of modification included in the legal system “, details the Governing Council of the Canary Islands.
The regional Executive had declared this investment in 2016 as strategic, in order to reduce the time of bureaucratic procedures by half. Two years later and as a result of this declaration, it was the Cabildo de Tenerife that proposed the modification of the Arico planning, but the Governing Council has just rejected this route.
Punta de Abona, as the project is called, plans to generate 1,550 direct jobs (plus hundreds indirect), of which between 50% and 70% are for the local market. It is planned to be developed in 1.78 million square meters, of which 300,000 (17%) are for hotel use (each hotel will occupy between 62,000 and 81,000 square meters), plus 400,000 for a coastal walk, 560,000 square meters for a space for environmental regeneration and another 50,000 for public squares and parks, as well as commercial and recreational equipment.
The project, like all those that affect large natural extensions of Tenerife, had generated a strong response. Ecologists called it an “urban attack” because it would produce “a great change” in the peculiar landscape of this part of the south of the Island, which would become an urbanized environment with a landscape impact on the coastal area. Sí Podemos Canarias, a group that supports the government of the Cabildo of TenerifeIt is also opposed because it puts at risk a dune ecosystem that feeds back from north to south, supplying sand to the beaches in the area, including Los Abrigos, Los Abriguitos, Abades or Los Cardones.
The dynamics of the sand
However, the author of the study contributed by the promoters of urbanization on the dynamics of the sands, the doctor in Geography from the University of Las Palmas Antonio Ignacio Hernández Cordero, reaches other conclusions, as pointed out by the digital Planeta Canario. According to Cordero, these three beaches are not related to each other and the project would not modify the transfer of sand in this area of great natural value on the coast of Tenerife. Along the same lines, the Ariquero mayor, Sebastián Martín, does not see the danger of the movement of sand that feeds the coves with these four hotels and the rest of the buildings.
