The Public Services area of the Santa Cruz City Council is still waiting to find out the cost of fixing the fountain known as the Monument to Franco, although, as confirmed by the mayor of Public Services, Carlos Tarife, it is an intervention that It will be produced, at least until the Santa Cruz City Council and the Government of the Canary Islands reach an agreement on the Catalog of Francoist vestiges.
While that understanding arrives, Tarife advances that “we are going to order a report, through the Council of the Government of the City Council, to the College of Architects to have a technical opinion, both in architectural and urban matters of that draft that the Government of Canary Islands”.
And it is that, insisted the mayor of Public Services, “what is clear is that we are not going to commit any imprudence. From Public Services we want to have that project finished and with the amount that comes out of the arrangement of that source, but of course what we are not going to do is what the Port Authority has done, which is to make a decision on architectural elements that are in discussion. We will not make any decision until it is resolved through the Catalog and Santa Cruz has been heard about what the Government of the Canary Islands intends to do.
The requests that Santa Cruz transfers to the regional Executive are clear. “We demand four things, the first of which is what we have already expressed and that is that we want a regional Catalog, we don’t want a catalog just for Santa Cruz, we want a regional one,” he said.
The second of the questions is an assignment to the College of Architects to obtain “a technical opinion”, while, in the third place, “when the Government calls us to negotiate the Catalog, we will present ourselves, but we will also request financing. We understand that there must be financing for all the municipalities of the Canary Islands by the Ministry of the Presidency and Justice, directed by Julio Pérez, in order to undertake the works of restitution or destruction of any element that is cataloged and that does not comply with the Law of Historical Memory of the Canary Islands”.
The last of the demands, Tarife points out, is that “we do not want to be public ridicule of anyone and we will ask the Government of the Canary Islands to agree with all the affected municipalities one day, so that, on that same date, the necessary works are carried out restitution or destruction of the controversial elements”.
Catalogue
Two weeks ago, and after the announcement by the previous mayor of Public Services, Guillermo Díaz Guerra, of commissioning this study of how much it would cost to start up the fountain of the Monument to Franco, the Historical Heritage area of the Government of the Canary Islands made it public the Catalog of Francoist vestiges of Santa Cruz, a study that is fully based on the one that the Santa Cruz City Council had already carried out in 2019 on the presence of Francoist elements in the streets of the capital. The Consistory’s reaction was to reject both the way of making it known and the fact that this Catalog only includes the remains of Santa Cruz.
In total there are 78 located in the capital according to the investigation carried out. Thus, there are three monuments, among which, in addition to Franco’s, on Francisco La Roche Avenue, there is that of the Fallen and that of the Nuestra Señora de Africa Market.
In the section of sculptures, there are six that are collected, among them the arch of the García-Escámez neighborhood, the obelisk to Francisco García Escámez or the Hélice of the Canarias cruise ship, which has already been removed by the Port of Santa Cruz. In shields, inscriptions and tombstones there are 12 other elements, such as, for example, the shield of the Naval Command.
As for the streets, there are more than thirty.
