The Cabildo de Tenerife has submitted to the Government of the Canary Islands the file relating to the modification of the delimitation of the Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC), with the category of Historical Ensemble, called the Hotel District-Pino de Oro in Santa Cruz, once The public information hearing processes were completed last May.
“We have taken an important step in relation to this matter that contemplates the expansion of the BIC and that will affect, among other properties, the Bullring of Santa Cruzwhen sending the file to the Government of the Canary Islands”, pointed out the island’s director of Heritage, Emilio Fariña, who added that “it is now the autonomous institution in charge of deciding on the extension”.
The BIC in the neighborhood of Los Pino de Oro Hotels was declared as such in 2007 and it was in 2020 when the file for its expansion was resumed by the Cabildo. It did so after the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands annulled the first attempt at this extension, carried out in 2014.
The Cabildo resumed the same extension, which the TSJC annulled, and began its processing with a document that contemplates the inclusion in the delimitation of the zone of elements as characteristic of the city as the Plaza de Toros, the Hotel Mencey and the Captaincy, among others.
The island institution justifies the expansion by pointing to the “need to modify it to provide more architectural precision to the complex and so that it includes a group of buildings representative of the architectural typologies that were developed on the island between the second half of the 19th century and first half of the XX”.
In addition, he adds that “the historical atmosphere of this historical urban space will be reinforced, by including the General Captaincy building, the Maestranza, the Artillery Park, together with the Quartermaster building, the work of Antonio Pintor”.
It should be noted that the number of owners who are going to be affected by this extension exceeds a thousand, who are the ones to whom the period of allegations that the Cabildo has just closed has been addressed.
Rejection of Santa Cruz
However, this new step to expand the BIC of Los Hoteles meets with the outright rejection of the Santa Cruz City Council, which already warned when the file began that it would go to court if necessary, a position maintained by the Consistory. This has been explained to DIARIO DE AVISOS by the mayor of Urbanism, Guillermo Díaz Guerra, who points out that “we do not understand the attitude of the Government of the Canary Islands and the Cabildo, one wanting to destroy our heritage (catalogue of vestiges) and another putting obstacles in our way”.
“Santa Cruz is processing a protection catalog -he continued- for the municipality that already includes what this expansion proposes, and, in addition, we are about to award the drafting of the Special Plan for Hotels. We do not understand this new delimitation that comes only to interfere with the normal operation of the procedures of the City of Santa Cruz. “I think the Cabildo should be more interested and support municipalities that lack services and let Santa Cruz make its own decisions,” he added.
Likewise, the mayor insisted that “we do not share the extension of that area and we made it known in the communication of the beginning of the procedure. Even so, the Cabildo goes ahead with this delimitation above the interests of the city, and of course at the opportune moment of the procedure we will express our opposition”.
For Díaz Guerra, “an expansion of the scope would not mean anything other than limiting the rights of many owners and interfering in future decisions that the city has to make.”
