“This has already happened,” recalls the mayor of Santa Cruz, José Manuel Bermúdez, referring to the first expansion of Santa Cruz at the expense of the land of the Santa Cruz Refinery. It was in the 80s of the last century when the Compañía Española de Petróleos SA (Cepsa), “gave a new city to Santa Cruz” in Cabo Llanos, as the headline of DIARIO DE AVISOS on September 10, 1987 says. Precisely, as has already happened, the mayor clarifies, “we cannot make the same mistakes that were made in Cabo Llanos, where there were successes, of course, but also errors that still remain unsolved today.” The mayor speaks of the lack of green spaces or the connection of that part of the city to the rest of the municipality through roads, public transport, or the necessary provisions for residents to stay and not choose to leave. That is why he announces the drafting of a specific building ordinance for the new area with which to “guarantee” that things are going to be done right from the beginning.
Tomorrow the first step will be taken in an event that will be historic, perhaps unique in the world, the complete dismantling of a refining industry that will give way, after the decontamination of the land, to a green area, with homes, spaces for leisure, offices, and everything that the more than 500,000 square meters that the Refinery occupies today allow. The Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, together with the President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, the President of the Cabildo, Pedro Martín, the Mayor of Santa Cruz, and the CEO of Cepsa, Maarten Wetselaar, will star in the institutional act for which will begin the dismantling of the Santa Cruz Refinery. The industry is going to the port of Granadilla, where it will continue with its fuel storage activity, for which it has already received the corresponding authorization.
The mayor defends that “it is a project that is going to have a lot to do with what we signed in 2018, that is, the parameters on which this planning is based are those that we signed four years ago, with about 70% of the land that It will be public, with community facilities, parks and gardens, new roads, and less than 30% will be converted into private land for city uses, with swimming pools, hotels, homes, which Cepsa or the City Council would promote because there is private use in terms of of housing that belongs to the City Council”, explains the mayor.
The planning process of these lands, assures the mayor, will be carried out in parallel with the dismantling and decontamination work of the industry, which is estimated to be completed in 2025. Bermúdez defends that everything that is done must be done in a way “ sustainable”. “Urban planning is only part of what we have to implement, we have to establish the rules that have to do with how it is built, how it is built. It would be an incredible mistake if we did not take advantage of this to introduce clean, sustainable energies, a nonsense if we did not take advantage of it to demand that the building area also be intelligent and sustainable, that the lighting no longer start with low consumption from the beginning, we would have to take advantage so that , in a short time, to be able to make a city that is an example worldwide”.
To do this, “we will have to create our own building ordinance for that area, because we want the buildings that go there to have quality, to be good, sustainable, and of important aesthetic quality. I anticipate making a specific ordinance for that area and of course not making some mistakes in the Cabo Llanos Plan, which have to do with quality, planning, execution, although there are also successes such as the Auditorium, the Palmetum, the Fairgrounds. It’s about learning from mistakes so as not to make them again.”
The mayor is not alone in his vision of what the new Santa Cruz will be once the Refinery land is added, his government partner, the PP, also defends the great opportunity that it is for Santa Cruz. “This is the first step for the Santa Cruz 2030 operation to become a reality,” said the spokesman and councilor for Public Services, Carlos Tarife. He adds that “the fact that the Urban Planning Department of the Santa Cruz City Council is in the hands of my colleague Guillermo Díaz Guerra is a guarantee that the process will be carried out successfully, because from the Popular Party we work being very aware that this project does not belong to any political party, but to the city of Santa Cruz”.
Holy Cross Green 2030
What begins tomorrow is the beginning of what Cepsa and Santa Cruz undertook to study in 2018 to give new life to these lands. “There will be no beach because, technically, it is difficult to solve the depth of La Hondura, but a bathing area is perfectly feasible, as well as a ride on that cliff and a bicycle ride. The exchanger is considering moving it to that area and it seems logical, and it would save on infrastructure such as the southern train, which would prevent us from putting the train in the center of the city, in addition to having a new entrance boulevard to Santa Cruz through the land to the refinery”, details the mayor. Hooking that part of the city to the existing one is also important. “The TF-5 cannot be a dividing line, as happened with Tres de Mayo in Cabo Llanos, 30 years ago. There have to be roads that connect the new area, the tram will have to get there, public transport…” concludes Bermúdez.
“A debate is necessary about what you want to do, because not everything will fit”
From a technical perspective, the conclusion is also that “it is a great opportunity” for Santa Cruz, but also for Tenerife and the Canary Islands as a whole. This is how the dean of the College of Architects of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Argeo Semán, defines the use of the Refinery land. He defends that it is vital “to make the effort to take advantage of this great opportunity not only because of what environmental issues mean, but above all because it represents an opportunity for the growth of the city with 21st century criteria, and I am referring to sustainability, spaces green, accessibility, inclusiveness, all concepts for which we now have a golden opportunity”.
Semán also warns that “this is going to be a long, very long process, not only because of the dismantling of the refinery and the decontamination of the soil, but also because of the processing itself, and because the city and the island do not have the capacity to Suddenly admit the arrival of so many square meters built for residential use, dotational, for offices and for public administrations”. “To all this -he continued- we must add that it is an area in which a lot of general road network systems are superimposed, there is the interchange, the tram… We are facing a space in which a lot of opportunities are concentrated and not only the building.
Precisely the magnitude of what can be done on these lands is why Semán understands that “we must have a prior debate, a reflection, on what you want to do on these lands”, in which the president of the college of Architects, “everything that everyone wants will not fit”. “We have to be flexible enough so that we can execute little by little, but also so that those things that we consider to be really important for the city, for the metropolitan area and for Tenerife, are implemented”.
Regarding what the College recommends to be done in that space, Semán is respectful of all visions. “In the School as a group there are many opinions, I think it is more a matter of debate to see what things we have to use because there will fit, many things will fit, but not all, so the first thing we have to do in any urban planning is to prioritize those things, and we have a space of more than 500,000 square meters which is an impressive development for which we need to see how we are going to do things”.
“It is clear -continues the dean of the College of Architects- that we are facing complex solutions, because it is not only going to be a residential solution, it is not only going to be an equipment area, neither offices, nor businesses, nor leisure, there must be a mix in which there is an integration of the city and society that is complex enough for us to understand that it is not a specialized area, that it is something that will always be more subject to a greater possibility of failure if it is not developed properly”. He concludes by pointing out that, above all, “what is done has to revolve around the idea of a city that is livable.”
