The mayor of Los Silos has many open fronts in her government because she has received a rather complicated inheritance. However, she believes that she cannot hang around the corners complaining but rather try to find solutions that, she does not hide, are being hard and for which she has taken a lot of sticks. “We’ve been here for two and a half years but we can’t fix everything that has come our way from previous mandates all at once,” says Macarena Fuentes (CC).
-The great problem of the City Council in the last decade has been the poor state of the municipal coffers. How are they currently?
“It is a worrying issue because we caught them in a quite complicated situation, although the opposite has been said. When you have money, it can be from subsidies that have to be justified and that money is no longer to be spent in the City Council but is destined for certain works, that is why the PSOE spokeswoman said that the previous government had left a surplus. The truth is that we have an Adjustment Plan to comply with since 2012, with no remainder or surplus, and we are one of the few municipalities that do not have it, and that has meant a complicated situation for the municipality. We have improved parameters because we have sacrificed areas to be able to carry out extrajudicial credit recognition. In 2019 we were able to approve a budget that was later challenged by the City Council staff and we are in a difficult economic situation to be able to approve some accounts. We found many debts that they wanted to close due to debts to suppliers, we managed to pay many but the debt is still there and we have to face it”.
-Is there a risk of a new adjustment plan?
“There may be because of the situation we are going through, but we are going to try that if we have to make a new one, not mortgage ourselves again with a long-term loan and condemn the municipality. That credit that we have until 2032 limits us and that is why the adjustment plan that we have. That is why I do not think that the most suitable solution is to request a loan again to pay for another plan and that is why we are going to sacrifice whatever is necessary”.
-Do you have help from higher administrations to be able to carry out the projects?
“We are solving with the subsidies that the Cabildo de Tenerife and the Government of the Canary Islands are giving us, although this last administration is more distant. If we add the pandemic to the economic situation, the challenge of getting ahead has made it difficult for us to be able to fulfill the projects that we have in the 2019 electoral program, because we had to focus on social services and helping citizens, since the list of vulnerable people and those left without work rose a lot.
– And to save the municipal swimming pool?
“No, I have to be honest and say that we have not had enough support from the Government of the Canary Islands. The Cabildo has done it with an institutional motion but I understand that we also have to get to work together, including the Government of Spain. I think that with everything we have done, legal, technical, economic allegations, implications of local councils in the region, in the Congress of Deputies, it makes me think that it has not been resolved because it is a political issue. I am seeing that the months go by, that February 2022 has arrived, in May we will be one step away from elections and I do not want to think that it is being delayed because of that and that they continue to drag their feet in waiting for 2023, to see if the PSOE wins the municipal elections and he scores as much for being the savior of the pool when he was the one who lost it. All the signs point to that and to crucify our people by not being able to open them and provide a service to certain groups, visitors and tourists. I think it is a lack of respect not only towards the municipality but towards the entire region”.
-Do you expect an exit to the TF-5 to become a reality?
“Yes, I hope it becomes a reality and that the citizens of Isla Baja are not left for last, we want equal opportunities. I have claimed and continue to claim that higher administrations have to invest more in the Low Island, both by this government and by previous ones. They have to have a more vision of the future with a region that can offer a lot to tourism”.
-Do you consider it essential to improve the Las Cruces connection?
“Both the Tierra del Trigo and Las Cruces highways benefit three municipalities in the region. Both the Cabildo and the Government have to bet on the project to improve security in the latter. The four mayors of the region have to claim that this project is a reality because we have to ensure the safety of the users who use this road.
-Has the purge in Isla Baja become politicized?
“What I experienced in the last plenary session had never happened. On the one hand, a small part of the population that has always demonstrated through a democratic and legitimate platform, and on the other hand, an electoral campaign, which I saw when I left the City Hall after the end of the session. I don’t know if the PSOE is taking advantage of the situation in which a platform manifests itself to campaign, because I don’t understand the request of its spokesperson either, who held a full-fledged political rally and then asked us to resign. I don’t know how he dares to do it when in reality the proposal to transfer wastewater from Garachico was signed in 2017 by three mayors from the PSOE and one from CC, the one from the latter municipality, and we found out once that it had been done. ‘How dare you ask me to resign knowing that if she had been in the Mayor’s Office she would have had to sign the same because there is no other solution?’ I can vouch for those two years of management in which perhaps feasibility studies of the purification system had to be sought, but I also want to remember that a pandemic has come and that in that time we have been focused on solving other problems. In addition, the previous government did nothing either, despite the fact that his party governed in the Cabildo and managed the Water area and the Insular Water Council. For small nuclei, natural purification is a reality, we have it in Masca, in Bolico, to cite two examples. And we have demanded that they be implanted in Tierra del Trigo and Erjos and we will continue to defend it. Regarding El Polvillo, I am not a technician or an engineer, that is why we are preparing feasibility studies to determine what system is necessary for that place according to the number of the population”.
-Does it bother you that they say that Los Silos is the toilet of the Low Island?
“It seems to me a lack of respect towards the municipality and towards all the Silenses. It’s going too far.”
-Does the Isla Baja Consortium work?
“Despite having different political acronyms, we are a team that sits down to seek benefits for the region. The proof is that we are tendering the specifications to pool the waste collection service, which is going to be much cheaper and the provision for citizens will be better. That is why it is important that this supra-municipal entity does not allow itself to die in the future and continues to advance in joining efforts, because many things can be achieved”.
-And the government pact with the PP?
“We have our ups and downs, of course. Whoever says that he does not have them governing in pact, is lying. But both parties have been aware of and responsible for what we have signed at the beginning of the mandate and the stability of the municipality comes first before our political acronyms and we are complying with it. To date, no one was betting on this agreement and we have been here for more than two years. And I hope to reach a good port until 2023 ”.
