Mari Brito, as a good mathematician, is a meticulous and patient woman, but if there is an issue that exceeds her, that is the treatment that Costas gives to the municipality that she governs since 2015. It is not easy to see her raise her voice, but in the face of it Considering an outrage, on this occasion he stops putting on hot packs and threatens to take Costas’s attitude towards Candelaria to the National Court, with several open fronts. Meanwhile, the socialist councilor continues to grow in her party and, apart from being president of Fecam (Canarian Federation of Municipalities), she is already a member of the Federal Committee of the PSOE and is also the author of the framework presentation of the next Regional Congress of Socialists .
-You have made a remodeling of your Government, taking over the Urban Planning area personally. Is there a government crisis?
“At all, you cannot speak of a crisis. We are happy and we appreciate that the public has given us an absolute majority. Right now, given the evolution of the administrative level of the City Council, it had already been postponing for some time this change that has finally taken place. We have restructured the competences of Urban Planning, detaching the licenses in sectors such as Commerce and Culture and Festivities, while Cecilia Otazo will be responsible for carrying out the 2030 Agenda, although in a transversal way. The early entry of the RPT and an administrative reorganization, and the changes in the planning of the territory, as well as the implementation of four urban development agreements and another four that may come, mean that there is a lot of work in Urban Planning, a key area that needs an impulse and I like to lead it ”.
-Come on, he’s going to bring the Technical Office to the waist.
“I would not choose these words, because colleagues and public employees do a good job, but it is true that they have to understand that they do not work in a watertight compartment, that they have to align themselves with the public policies that we are carrying out. At that level, it is clear that the Mayor’s Office is the one that deploys this transversality in all areas and that is why I made the decision that Urbanism should have another mission, but always with the complicity of public employees, who must understand that they are part of the neighbors’ solution. We have some important challenges, because Candelaria is writing its future through urban planning ”.
-And for these challenges, rather than reviewing, is it mandatory to modify the General Plan?
“Finally, we have opted, after many analyzes, for the modification of the PGO, as is the case of the space that we acquired in the old warehouses of Don Sixto Machado, with a large area for public parking and an ethnographic center. We have already commissioned the work to modify the General Plan at that point, as well as in the orchards of Don Pablo, as well as for the acquisition of land for social housing. Administrative times make me desperate, but they are what they are ”.
-And in those projects I suppose there will be the indoor pool that was sold in 2015 and that in the end did not come out.
“It is true that in previous stages things were advanced when we did not have the tools to build them, but now we do. Last April, finally, the land that was committed to the previous municipal swimming pool project, whose tender was deserted after the legal proceedings we are experiencing, was released and we have started the process to tender a new project, providing, through the remainder of treasury, the drafting of specifications, which has cost us time, because we are not going to return to a bidding mechanism as was done previously, with the drafting of the project, the execution and the exploitation of the pool. We do not want to go through the same experience and we intend to launch the project, with the co-financing of the Cabildo, as happens with the auditorium. We hope that before the end of the year we will put out the tender and in the summer we will be able to start executing the two projects, the swimming pool and the auditorium ”.
– From what I understand, it would not be an administrative concession, but a work done by and for the City Council.
“Yes, the execution will be municipal and the management in the auditorium will also be from the Culture area. In Sports we already have fewer resources and there may be private management. But before the term ends, these works will be underway ”.
-Let’s talk about the Candelaria coastline. How is it that Costas does not finish the Candelaria beach and wants to make another one next to the rotating parking lot, which does not let them exploit as such, with the benefits that this implies for the mobility of the municipal center?
“This is what we are asking ourselves. In fact, we have filed a dispute, because we were denied the parking concession, after a very important investment, of more than 300,000 euros, having a concession for rotating parking lots. We were surprised that they authorized the emergency work and shortly after they did not renew the administrative concession, telling us that they wanted to recover the public domain. What we have said is that this parking is a public service and of first necessity. If we exploit it, it is to justify the rotation, because if it were free, as now, the parking lot will always be clogged. Hopefully our appeal will be dealt with soon ”.
-In the case of the swimming pool, why don’t they give you the concession either?
“Here it happens that they ask us for a canon of more than 60,000 euros and our technicians value it at about 40,000, and we are in those conservations. Of course, the State Government wants to recover the public domain and in this case it would be the glass of the pool, not the building. The concession was granted to us in the year 85 and since then it has always been given to us. Since 2015 that concession has been stopped and has been regularized, but now we are back in talks and hopefully we will not have to go to another dispute such as the parking lot. We are in that fight. I am very upset with this matter, because we do not know how to explain it. I feel helpless, frustrated and very upset with this situation, and I have let Costas know that we will have some time to build the covered swimming pool for a municipality that has 30,000 inhabitants. What I don’t understand is what happens with Costas in Candelaria, because it is only in Candelaria. The same does not happen throughout the Spanish State when there are public and private pool concessions. Let’s hope we will be heard, because otherwise we will have to go to court, in this case, to the National Court. “
-Is there a project for the Las Caletillas power plant, when, curiously, the Canarian Government does not allow groups 5 and 6 to be dismantled, which Endesa describes as obsolete?
“I know that the Vice-Ministry has attended to Red Eléctrica’s reports on the risk that not having these groups active would pose to the system. I believe that there is an impulse with this Government to renewable energies, although I am very afraid that we will not achieve the 2030 Agenda, because we cannot change a system overnight. The system, as it is now in the Canary Islands, depends on fossil energy, because renewables are not robust enough to not depend on gas or fuel oil. We don’t have any device that stores renewable energy, so we still depend on fossil energy ”.
-But Candelaria one day be able to recover that land for a green park, sports facilities and others, as stated in the PGO, or will this plant finally be converted into a renewable energy warehouse?
“The PGO does contemplate that park, but after the resolution of the Vice-Ministry of the Environment that forced us to modify the General Plan in that space, which we are going to have to do. As you know, the substation is already being built, the new high voltage network is being installed and neither in the short nor in the medium term will we be able to dismantle the thermal power plant. Not the plant, but the facility, which would become either storage or generation through renewable sources. There are projects on the table, but we are still talking in the long term. What really makes me desperate are the times and this is an example ”.
-You are the mayor of Candelaria, president of Fecam and now a member of the Federal Committee of the PSOE. Was there talk in the Valencia Congress about heartbreak with Podemos and about a possible electoral advance?
“Always in a coalition government there will be debate and discrepancies, because they are two different parties. I think the priorities of the two are the same, as is social welfare, although there are differences in financial policy. The best thing that happens to this country is that the right is not ruling, especially in these critical moments, and that should be a priority for the two parties of the coalition, especially for the PSOE, a government party, as it has been. demonstrated with the management of the pandemic, with the policies of sustainability, equality and feminism ”.
– And will there be reform or repeal of the labor reform of the PP?
“There will be reform of the labor reform. Podemos has to take charge of who is in the Government and in that bosom is where we must speak. What cannot be is to be in the Government and to oppose, because that is disloyalty. I have experience in disloyalty, that’s why I’m telling you ”.
-You will be responsible for the framework presentation of the PSOE Regional Congress in three weeks. What grade do you give the Torres government so far, the only candidate for the General Secretariat?
“I think he is doing a great job in two years that have been intense and full of obstacles, now even with the La Palma volcano. He has led a government of active listening with three well-differentiated partners. I think he comes to the regional Congress very reinforced by his work in the Executive and also as leader of the party. I think we all have to add and not grow ”.
-And you on which electoral list will you go in 2023?
“A lot of people ask me that question and I don’t understand why. I am working for my municipality and for the municipalities of the entire Canary Islands. In two years we will not have time to do everything we plan to do for Candelaria and if my party wants it, I would like to run again to choose to continue in the Mayor’s Office ”.
