He starts a new political course after having approved new budgets and an investment plan. When will the concrete results of it be seen?
After the cuts by the central government in the crisis, the municipalities came to have more money accumulated in their coffers than available in the budget to invest. Arico has not been oblivious to these disastrous policies, reaching a situation of collapse from which we began to emerge after the motion of censure to the PSOE, which refused to pay the bills, and from which we will finally leave at the end of September, date in which the allegations will be resolved and, therefore, the budget will receive the final approval of the plenary session.
Have these allegations delayed the implementation of the budget?
Most of the allegations have been presented by the Socialist Group, which met on several occasions with the Councilor for the Treasury to propose everything they deem appropriate. However, after having asked in plenary session that the budget be left on the table, wanting to delay it without a date, they abstained, ignoring the previous favorable vote of the neighborhood associations. From there, they have dedicated themselves to trying to block the City Council with some little worked allegations, which have forced us to wait until the end of September to finally approve the accounts. The important thing is that the budget and the investment plan will go ahead, injecting more than twenty million euros in investment to transform our municipality from top to bottom with resurfacing, new playgrounds, new lights, improvements in sports centers, new leisure areas or parking, subsidies to groups or the completion of the Plaza de la Villa de Arico.
“In the case of the hotels in Punta de Abona, rigor, seriousness and determination are needed”
Almost a year ago, he told this newspaper that he hoped that “2021 would be the year of the agreement with the Cabildo to draft a new agreement to house the Environmental Complex.” Are both administrations going in that direction?
Until a few years ago, Arico had two agreements with the Cabildo, one for which we entered around 700,000 euros a year and another, which they have left without effect, which paid us one million euros per year to be executed in public works. Regarding the first, Olivia Delgado, being mayor, negotiated in secret, I was Councilor for the Environment and they did not inform me, the renewal of the agreement to leave it practically the same, when the logical thing would have been to fight its increase. In such a way that, upon reaching the Mayor’s Office, the island councilor Javier Rodríguez told me that the time to negotiate had already ended and that if the City Council did not sign the renewal, they would stop us entering the money, which would have led us to a Economic and Financial Plan.
And the second agreement?
Regarding the PIRS Agreement on Deseconomies, they have betrayed us. Pedro Martín has been missing the truth all this year. Personally, I do not care how well he can treat me, but the problem comes when he does not understand that I represent 9,000 people who are fed up with the fact that the same PSOE that put them in the landfill now denies him his just compensation or that we have a landfill, but not a clean point. This forces them to travel to Güímar or Arona from where these waste, once treated, return to the PIRS. The ariqueros, in addition, have to pay the Cabildo for throwing away our waste more than 300,000 euros a year.
Have you received a formal refusal?
In 2020 we set a deadline until December to start negotiating. Later, they asked us to be patient until the island budget for 2021 came out. At the end of January, I asked him by letter to attend to our claims, a letter to which he never responded. There is a motion in the Cabildo and another in the City Council that forces them to negotiate. And yet, the news of the refusal has reached us in a response to the opposition of the counselor Rodríguez Medina, affirming that this compensation will not be possible. So I’m going to respond to him and the president in the most blunt way I know: if they deny us compensation from the PIRS, we will work from now on to close that landfill, committing to ensure that no jobs go unrecovered. I have the support of the Ariquera society for this. So I want the message to get through to them: if they abuse us, we will stand up to them until this heist is stopped.
Does this confine it to the Cabildo or the PSOE?
Those are the relationships that part of the Cabildo wants to have with us due to a matter of political resentment. To Mr. Arriaga, however, I can only offer words of gratitude, since he has solved the access problem to the institute, he is resurfacing the highway near Arico and he has committed to promoting Tuwawa, a project that I strongly support. But with the PSOE my hand is tired from offering it so much. Look, they deny us compensation from the PIRS, the El Río dam, the hotels in La Punta and the stoppage of the La Morra mills, with a favorable ruling. Regarding the General Plan of Ordination, the regional councilor José Antonio Valbuena is talking about waiting “other years more.” With all this, the head of the Socialist Group in Arico, far from helping us, only yells at us in plenary sessions or rebukes us on Facebook from Madrid, giving lessons of love for her people when she preferred to stay in the Senate rather than attend mass for the Virgin of Abona on the big day of our municipality.
Has the El Río dam also been denied?
They did it the day after we claimed their study. In fact, Javier Parrilla, Councilor for Agriculture of the Cabildo, argued his refusal, alluding to an alleged consultation with the College of Engineers of Tenerife and, however, hours later, the dean publicly denied it. The three mayors of the future mancomunidad, which will form San Miguel de Abona, Granadilla de Abona and Arico, have been asking for a report from the Tenerife Island Water Council for months and we are still waiting.
Do you have any hope that the hotels, as they say here, or the Punta de Abona project will finally succeed?
Yes, but they have to agree first. It cannot be that the president of the Cabildo supports those hotels, the person in charge of the PSOE in Arico first yes and then no, and, finally, once again the councilor José Antonio Valbuena establishes the no by system. It takes rigor, seriousness and will, because the message we are sending to investors and Canarian society is that development in Tenerife came to a halt after the 2019 elections.
