Half of the mandate has passed and Carlos Alonso (CC)as promised, continues to lead the opposition in the Council of Tenerife. He admits that he continues to think the same as in 2019, when he lost the presidency of the Insular Corporation, that he wants to do other things and that is how he has transferred it to CC, which, he admits, continues to pull him. It will be before September when he will know if finally repeat as a candidate or someone else will take his place. Meanwhile, he says he can’t get tired of denouncing what, in his opinion, is happening in the Cabildo in the current mandate and that he doesn’t like it. “We have a rich Cabildo, which has plenty of money,” he says, so “the least he can do is transfer income to the people who are having the worst time.”
-CC has been criticizing the lack of leadership of the Cabildo since the beginning of the mandate with the new government team. Has that criticism made a dent, have you seen any change?
“What we have seen so far has a lot to do with a way of acting that we don’t like at all and that is sectarianism. It is something that we have seen in the set of direct subsidies that the Cabildo programmed for the 2022 budget, where it multiplies by almost ten the amount that it gives to the municipalities, and of which 80% are directed to municipalities in which they govern the socialists. Then, the other element is the low execution, which practically repeats that of 2020, stopping executing some 170 million, so between 2020 and 2021, they have stopped spending 340 million.
-Another criticism is the “destructive desire” as you define it of all the programs that CC launched…
“This is another element that we are verifying in this mandate, the lack of programming and planning. Most of the programs that the Cabildo was developing with the municipalities were included in the Strategic Framework for Investment Development (MEDI) in all areas, 36 programs, and practically all of them ended in 2021, with which the logical thing would have been to reschedule them , or, having a new government team, that they had redefined the planning policy. Well, there is no approved program, not even the Municipal Cooperation Plan, which is mandatory, which should have entered into force on January 1 of this year. They have dedicated themselves to destroying projects that worked and have not replaced them with anything. It is a demolition task without building new projects”.
-Even so, this week a million was announced to meet the needs of the elderly…
“This is what we are talking about distributing money to the municipalities, that is not a policy. So much so that they announced a comprehensive program to care for the elderly that would favor their active aging, and what they do is this, distribute a million, very little money on the other hand, so that the municipalities do it. What they have done is destroy what was there and they have been unable to manage new actions. An example is the Plan for the Elderly, which was put out to tender and was left deserted, and they have done nothing but give money to the municipalities. I believe that this is not the Cabildo, which should be a driving mechanism, creator of a model for the Island, and we have nothing on the table that represents that model that the president wants to promote.”
-Mobility is essential in any Island model, what do you think of the way it is being addressed?
“It is true that at the time we were committed to the exterior road and to the development of a new road in the metropolitan area, but that position, in the last mandate, was modified by agreement of all the political forces, and that agreement, to which I am still faithful, it is promoting a third lane on the North Highway, with preferential use for buses and high-occupancy vehicles. The highway today has a significant problem of capacity, but also of design, with the links, and not only at its entrance to the metropolitan area. The first action of that agreement was to expand the highway to Guamasa with a third lane that would connect the area, and remodel the three links that exist.
-And what has changed according to you?
“Well, all of this should be running now, and yet, with the change of government, what was done was to stop it and prioritize the drafting of a new variant that has an outrageous cost for us, apart from the fact that it continues to affect the soil. agrarian and that provides a solution that simply consists in that the queues, instead of reaching Padre Anchieta, will reach Lora and Tamayo, when what should be done is an increase in the capacity of the TF-5. In addition, we had a whole series of complementary actions, such as the dissuasive parking lots on the entire motorway, and nothing has been done. What’s more, actions such as the shuttle that we put in, and that left from La Orotava, with parking at the La Villa Shopping Center, and that covered the journey first thing in the morning, have been suppressed.
-Another point of disagreement, even among the government partners, is the southern train…
“The fragmentation that exists within the government is paralyzing the Island. What Podemos thinks and says compared to what Cs or the PSOE says and thinks, paralyzes Tenerife. The case of trains is paradigmatic. While in Gran Canaria there is unanimity, with PSOE and Podemos supporting the development of the trains, here, neither Podemos nor PSOE promote it. I think that the case of Pedro Martín is even more critical, if possible, because at the beginning of this mandate he met with all the mayors of the south of the island to promote it, but he has seen that Podemos has established a red line there, and so he has decided sacrifice the future of Tenerife to stay in power”.
-What is CC’s position on gas?
“It may be surprising, but we want the same thing that Gran Canaria wants, although it may not seem like it, and it is nothing more than a regasification plant for the port that allows electricity to be supplied through regasification and turbine injection, and the supply of liquefied gas to ships. That is what we want and we do not understand this apparent contradiction between both councils. We do not think that city gas is an element to be supported, but if natural gas contributes to reducing emissions and, moreover, ships are going to be increasingly supplied with liquefied gas for transport, we also need to have storage and I think which should be in Granadilla and Santa Cruz”.
-In the current situation of rising prices, you defend the lowering of some, such as that of the buses, although the Cabildo maintains that, although it will not raise it, now I could not lower it….
“We believe that the price can be lowered now, and not at the end of the mandate as the government team proposes, and we believe it because we have a rich Cabildo, which has plenty of money. Last year he had 170 million left over, he has practically no debt, a merit of ours, that we left the debt at zero, and, in addition, he is benefiting from the current economic situation, with a positive impact of inflation on collection, since that the income of the Cabildo is very dependent on the IGIC, and in a few months, in which inflation pushes a lot in the domestic economies, this collection will rise. So the Cabildo has many economic possibilities, it is rich, and what it has to do is transfer income to the most vulnerable people.”
-Are there other aspects in which the Cabildo can act?
“Yes. The same happens with the action that the Cabildo has on Canarian fuels. The councils, by the hydrocarbon law of the Canary Islands, have a maximum rate of 2 cents per liter of gasoline or diesel, and we ask that they temporarily suspend that rate, although it is not much, it is something, because if you look at it in macro terms, there are 10 million, which the Cabildo transfers from its economic capacity to that of the people who have it worse, that is an income agreement. We have also proposed a system of tax checks. If you have a tax system that reaches all income sectors through the collection of taxes, with that system, instead of collecting, you can pay. In Spain we saw it with baby checks. Another example is ITER, which has not built a single square meter more, nor one more windmill of renewable energy than we left and, even so, it will have record profits, of more than 11 million. The reason is that ITER is an energy producer, part of which goes to the market, and since the price has risen a lot, its profits will double, since part of that could be dedicated to society”.
-Are you going to repeat as a candidate?
“There is still no answer to that question. I keep saying no and the party tells me to think about it. I think that by the summer it will be known. Can’t wait any longer. The calendar for appointing candidates at the local level has already begun, and then the insular and regional ones will come”.
-Do you feel like it?
“It is not a question of desire, but that I feel like doing other things. I am still here at the foot of the canyon, we have put on the dress of the opposition, of criticism, making proposals, sometimes too many. I am coordinating the group with the same enthusiasm, but also that other things attract me and that is why I communicated at the beginning of the mandate that I did not want to continue. The party has continued to pull the thread a bit, don’t leave mid-term, and I accepted that, but today I still think that other things attract me”.
-Have you had any communication from the court after the complaint about the alleged irregularities in the purchase of the Geneto land was admitted for processing?
“In the case of Geneto there has been no news. The complaint was admitted by the Prosecutor’s Office, but there has been no further development. We have appeared, and we are pending to examine the documentation that the court has. What we are saying is that it is an operation that was carried out to support the university in the development of its technological campus, that both Geneto and Hogar Gomero had space for its development with a series of peculiarities, and that land was acquired for that purpose. . The delay in executing Cuevas Blancas and the Hogar Gomero caused Geneto to be delayed, but the plan was to start developing it in this mandate, and that is what we will present in court”.
