Yes, it can be considered that “the port of Fonsalía is the residue of a speculative and failed model, an infrastructure that is not justified in a vulnerable and limited territory, where in recent years it has been decided to prioritize sustainability, according to different decisions adopted by public administrations as significant as the Government of the Canary Islands, the Cabildo de Tenerife and various municipalities in Tenerife ”, says Rubén Fuentes as spokesman for the Canarian party on the matter of eco-social transition.
Fuentes reiterates the rejection of Yes you can to a project that was already ruled out by the General Directorate of Coasts of the Ministry for Ecological Transition in 2019 and that, “it makes even less sense than years ago, when currently the crisis caused by the pandemic places to the Canary Islands before the moment of truth regarding what model is viable for the life of the social group to be sustainable in the Archipelago, beyond serving for the profit of a hotel industry that today is watering after having consumed a large part of the territory and the limited resources that we have ”.
“Fonsalía’s is not a mobility project between islands, that is something that must be clarified definitively. This is easy to recognize when it is identified that about 80% of its surface is intended to be used for commercial and sporting uses; therefore, the port project has a tourist objective and responds to a model that has already expired ”, says the spokesperson for Sí se Podemos.
In the opinion of the eco-socialist organization, “Fonsalía is not an alternative to a supposed inability of the port of Los Cristianos to face the challenges of mobility between the western islands, nor is it true that the traffic jams that occur around this pier in some periods in the hours of embarkation and disembarkation operations are the cause of the collapse of road traffic in Tenerife, not even this can explain the difficulties of road traffic in the south of the island. This reality occurs because the mobility model based on the individual use of private vehicles and is one more symptom of the expiration of the model that we have followed in the Canary Islands ”, highlights Fuentes.
Yes, we can bet on “not continuing with the creation of port infrastructures that end up abandoned due to their demonstrated inability to function as what was falsely presented: a shock to the island economy that is not true, as shown by the cases of Granadilla and Garachico , which continue not to operate, while the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife is abandoned and is not being exploited at its real capacity ”, he adds.
Regarding the situation of Los Cristianos, the Canarian eco-socialist organization states that this port is sufficient in terms of its capacity to guarantee port connections between the western islands. The problem of land connection between the port and the rest of the Island occurs on very special occasions of the year —beginning and ending of summer vacations, Christmas, Easter… -, moments for which the solution is found with changes in the model of land transport and with other actions, such as the orderly coordination of docking and departure times for boats, something that the Government of the Canary Islands can promote simply by invoking the general interest. To this should be added a transport engineering study that seeks a technical solution to the traffic junction that forms in the port of Los Cristianos and its surroundings.
“Simple, reasonable measures, with an expenditure of public funds infinitely less than the cost of a new port, with an orientation guided by the search for sustainability and the reorientation of the production model, in addition, they collaborate in respecting an area of high sensitivity that we are obliged to respect due to the qualification of the Teno-Rasca Special Zone as a Site of Community Importance (SCI), a figure with which the European Union protects spaces that contribute to the restoration of the natural habitat, ecosystems and biodiversity of wild fauna and flora; Added to this is the declaration of Tenerife as the first Whale Heritage Site in Europe and the third in the world, since this area is visited by more than 20 species of cetaceans ”, affirms Fuentes.
“When the Government of the Canary Islands prepares to analyze the climate crisis in Parliament through the debate on the report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Experts on Climate Change (IPCC), which emphasizes the effect of human action on this phenomenon, and while his counselor for Ecological Transition assures that the process can only be tackled with a change in the socioeconomic and energy model at a global level, in the Canary Islands we have to be brave and discard occurrences that contradict this priority objective ”, concludes the spokesperson for Sí se can .
