It was designed for a coastal polygon of 222,000 square meters, with an esplanade of 6.4 hectares, five mooring lines for the commercial boats that cover the routes with La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro, 739 meters in length for berths and a capacity for 470 sports boats.
But the project of port of Fonsalía, in the municipality of Guía de Isora, which began to hold its first technical meetings 25 years ago, is increasingly entangled in a heated social debate and a political and institutional confrontation that does not stop growing. The alternative project to the Los Cristianos pier, strangled by the high volume of passengers (almost 2 million a year before the pandemic) and the lack of space to grow, runs the risk of not reaching a good port.
The expiration of the Environmental Impact Statement, advanced last week by this newspaper, has stirred the debate on Isoran infrastructure. Once the six-year period has expired, expired in December 2020, which stipulates the Environmental Impact Law, the Ministry of Public Works, responsible for the project, must now decide whether to carry out a new study, starting the entire declaration process from scratch. environmental legislation and with a much more demanding legislation than the previous one or abandon the project, as happened with the regasification plant in Tenerife, which was parked when the environmental declaration expired. Of all the voices, the one that seems most determined to move forward is that of the president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, the socialist Pedro Martín.
In statements to DIARIO DE AVISOS, the Minister of Ecological Transition, José Antonio Valbuena, warned that “there are many elements that make the execution of the port almost unfeasible; If already with the previous legislation of 2008, the environmental impact statement came out with 25 conditions that are very difficult to solve, now it will be very difficult to raise a statement and make it positive, because the legislation places a lot of emphasis on studying zero alternatives, which in our The case is to improve the exit from Los Cristianos and the current uses of the port of Granadilla de Abona ”.
The counselor advanced that his department has commissioned a study from the University of La Laguna on the environmental values of the surroundings of Fonsalía and the Special Conservation Zone, which he will transfer to the Department of Public Works before it decides whether to return to the starting box and initiates a new environmental impact study – what Valbuena describes as “waste of time”, because the result of the declaration “will surely be negative” – or resigns from the project.
Fonsalía has caused the first public confrontation between the Minister of Ecological Transition and the president of the Cabildo, both from the PSOE. “It is much more populist to oppose a port than to try to generate social development, but I do not want to fall into populism,” Pedro Martín told this newspaper, who asked that the opinion of the presidents of the councils be heard. “The counselor should not rush with opinions that may sound apparently good, but that leaves out the criteria of the island representatives, who think about development, the ability to improve communications, lower transport costs and facilitate transport. transit of the economy of the peripheral islands ”.
In addition to describing as “amazing” an approach “that would go against the Government of the Canary Islands and a recent approval of Parliament”, Martín invited the counselor to broaden the horizon of the report requested from the University of La Laguna. “I would ask you to commission a study for all the Canary Islands coasts, because, if not, it would seem that the only objective that this study sets out is to be able to find a justification to say ‘no’ to the port”.
As the days go by, the controversy wins whole and incorporates new actors. The leader of the Tenerife builders has not hesitated to take a step forward and align himself with the thesis of the president of the Cabildo. Óscar Izquierdo (Fepeco) demanded “political responsibilities” if it is shown that there has been “guilty indolence” in the expiration of the Environmental Impact Statement of the project and called for “drastic disciplinary measures in the entire administrative apparatus responsible for failing miserably.”
“If the file has been allowed to expire, it seems that in Tenerife those who govern are some nonists and sectarians embedded in the public administration who, with their permanent denialist reports, continually paralyze any public infrastructure or private initiative that generates economy and employment,” he said. Izquierdo, who considers the port of Fonsalía “key” for the economic growth and social development of Tenerife, La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro.
At the opposite pole is the Association of Friends of Nature (ATAN). His spokesman, Eustaquio Villalba, expressed his satisfaction with the pronouncement of the department headed by Valbuena. “This is great news and we have celebrated it a lot in ATAN because it means that the port of Fonsalía is increasingly far away,” said the historic environmental leader. He maintains that it is a “relief” to think that the next Environmental Impact report should take into account the reality of the natural wealth of the area, “especially as a passage area for mammals, in addition to the species that live there.”
“Six ports are not justified, three of them large commercial infrastructures, along 35 kilometers of coastline, and the economic motivations they allege are absurd, because gaining 10 minutes in a trip to the western islands is insignificant and in no case does it justify that enormous investment and the great impact it causes, ”said the ATAN spokesperson.
Another of the voices that has joined the debate has been that of the mayor of Arona, the municipality where the port of Los Cristianos is located. José Julián Mena has shown his opposition to Fonsalía, “a project that requires an investment of 200 million euros in the middle of the Special Conservation Area, which has great biodiversity and is one of the only three places in the world considered a Whale Heritage Site ”.
In Mena’s opinion, the solution is to solve the mobility and urban development problems of the Aronero coastal area and its port. “Los Cristianos, with the traffic that supports passengers and goods, deserves an investment of less than 40 million euros for its modernization compared to 200 million from Fonsalía,” he said.
From the Círculo de Empresarios del Sur de Tenerife, its president, Roberto Ucelay, indicated that “the port of Fonsalía is very important for Tenerife and the green islands, as it improves and reduces the navigation of ferries, ends the saturation of the port from Los Cristianos and contributes to generating a marine sports offer, clearly deficient on the Island, which is a very profitable sector from an economic point of view ”.
Ucelay recalls that all the studies carried out advise the construction of the port in Guía de Isora, although he also indicated that Los Cristianos, “a nucleus in free fall in activity and employment”, needs a “revision”.
