Ian and Ian are an English couple who have been living in a house in the La Rambla neighborhood for two and a half years, in San Juan de La Rambla, located on the main road. They bought the house, located at number 21, about 250 years old and that still preserves part of the old road on the outside. They did it after retiring, to be calm, away from the madding crowd and from their native England. The house is at least 250 years old, and it still preserves part of the original road on the outside.
But they never imagined what was coming their way: the construction of a bus stop a few meters away that so far has only brought problems to both them and the residents of the other six nearby properties.
One of them is Belén, who has lived since she was 7 years old at number 17, where her mother was born, in a family home that was later divided into two. Her mother is 77 years old and she does not dare to go out on the street because of the obstacles she has to overcome, the main one, a sidewalk that the elderly or people with disabilities cannot walk on, because it is on a slope. “They have left her incommunicado,” laments her daughter.
In the pavement rehabilitation project, the original stop was located meters behind, where it always was, but from the Council of Tenerife “They argued that for security reasons they had to move,” say the neighbors.
A decision that was not agreed with the City Council and to which it was opposed because it knew the problem that it was going to generate for the neighbors. Despite the insistence, this newspaper could not know the explanation of the insular officials.
Initially and according to the plan that was given to those affected and to which this newspaper had access, the construction of seven battery parking spaces was contemplated that finally, and nobody knows the reason, they decided to suppress. None of the residents of the seven houses use public transport because they have a car since it is a remote place and they have to travel for any paperwork or purchase that would be impossible to do by bus because they have to cross the road.
To this are added other problems, such as the felling of a Canarian pine, ‘the pine of La Rambla’, as the neighbors know it, which was finally stopped. In this case, the most affected, the English gentlemen, because it is located right in front of their home, appealed “to the principle of non-regression of green spaces”, an instrument to avoid the suppression of regulations or the reduction of their demands for interests that fail to prove that they are legally superior to the environmental public interest, since in many cases, such regressions could lead to irreversible environmental damage.
In Spain, the Criminal Code of 1995, specifically, in its article 319, punishes “promoters, builders or directing technicians who carry out unauthorized urbanization, construction or building works on land destined for roads, green areas, property public domain or places that have legally or administratively recognized their landscape, ecological, artistic, historical or cultural value, or for the same reasons have been considered of special protection.
The channeling of the water is another serious inconvenience because they have not built a sewage system, say the neighbors. “It is a poorly designed and executed work, when they pave the sidewalk we fear that the water will reach the houses,” says Belén. “In our case, the fear is that when the work begins the house will shake and crack,” says one of the English gentlemen.
Nor has a shoulder been left so that cars can stop in the event of a breakdown, as happened last week for this reason and long queues formed in the lane towards Isla Baja.
According to Belén, those responsible for the project “have only thought of the tourists who are the ones who use public transport because there are several paths here,” insists Belén, who points out that those affected “have not stopped moving papers and complaining. In his case, he has reached the Ombudsman and managed to have the file sent to Madrid. “But it’s David versus Goliath,” he maintains.
City Council requirement
They are not the only ones upset. The government group of San Juan de la Rambla reproaches the Cabildo de Tenerife -although they are of the same political party- that the project has not been agreed upon “despite the fact that it is a legal obligation”.
For this reason, in the next few days it will make a request to the insular Administration to send the entire administrative file “in order to know in depth the project that has been developed with its respective modifications and the mandatory reports of the areas involved and the sector reports on the Environment, because the City Council does not understand certain actions that have been carried out with respect to the original project”.
Since Thursday, the residents have installed black ribbons on the facades of the houses to convey the message that La Rambla is “dead” and that “they are disappointed” because from the Cabildo “they show no signs of anything”, despite the fact that they are convinced that There are possibilities to find another location for the bus stop and also a safe provisional solution to access and leave the neighborhood until the definitive one is executed.
Nueva Canarias asks Franquis about the road safety of the neighbors
The president of the parliamentary group of Nueva Canarias (NC), Carmen Herrnández, will ask the Minister of Public Works, Transport and Housing of the Government of the Canary Islands, Sebastián Franquis, about the road safety of the residents of La Rambla. Specifically, the parliamentarian will be interested in the measures that she plans to adopt to deal with the neighborhood claim about a safe entry and exit to the TF-5, as it passes through this population center.
This parliamentary initiative, which will be substantiated in an upcoming commission, arises after the visit made, at the end of last February, by the parliamentary spokesman for the progressive canaristas, Luis Campos, together with the president of the local NC committee, Juan Alberto Perez; among other leaders, in order to learn first-hand about this problem.
A traffic black spot between the intersection of La Rambla and the Ruiz ravine, where the residents and many tourists who frequent the area risk their lives on a daily basis. Nueva Canarias believes that, after 42 years, the time has come to arbitrate a solution and address the demands of residents, whose protests have intensified and moved, on occasions, to the headquarters of the Presidency of the Canary Executive, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife .
