SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, July 17. (EUROPE PRESS) –
Citizen groups have asked Carlos Sainz and Antonio Lobato to withdraw their support for the Tenerife Motor Circuit and not attend the promotional event next Tuesday at the ‘Adán Martín’ Auditorium, assuring that their image “will be used by the island’s political leaders with electoral purposes and that this infrastructure, financed exclusively with public money, is generating a deep fracture in public opinion in Tenerife”.
Through a letter, signed by eight citizen groups such as the Tenerife Friends of Nature Association (ATAN), the Ecologist Association Salvar La Tejita-Recovering natural spaces or the Ben Magec Ecologists In Action Federation, they address these two renowned personalities of the motoring world to ask them to withdraw their support for this future infrastructure.
In the letter, they point out that the Motor Circuit that Sainz and Lobato are coming to present next Tuesday “will be financed with public funds (about 80 million euros) and on land of high environmental sensitivity”, and they add that for many candidatures “The promise of this sports infrastructure has been used as an electoral trick by different political parties that have tried to take advantage of the illusion of motor fans to get votes every time the elections are approaching.”
The groups warn those in charge of presenting the Motor Circuit that next Tuesday “they will be used (as they are media figures) by the island’s political leaders to sponsor the umpteenth deception of motor fans.” They maintain that this project “has not yet passed the demanding permitting process that it needs to be executed, which has not been resolved for many years,” and they add that if this turns out to be “another false promise,” Carlos Sainz and Antonio Lobato “They will be running the risk of being remembered as participants in a sad populist propaganda.”
The signatories of the letter indicate that the potential of motor sports, the social mass that they move and the solvency of the companies that involve it, is well known. That is why they believe it is “perfectly feasible” to find a private investor who satisfies the demands of Tenerife fans and takes on the opportunity to build a regulated motor circuit on this island. “Looking for a less impressive location in another more degraded location on the island and being promoted by private capital, we will reach that point of consensus and without a doubt this infrastructure will be well received by the population of the island,” they say.
Canarian society is at the bottom of the country in terms of unemployment, school performance, wages, population at risk of exclusion. For this reason, they consider that it would be more urgent to direct these public funds to other budget items on which many families and small businesses depend in order to get ahead.
The eight citizen groups that sign the letter say they are confident that, having known the background and the controversy generated, Sainz and Lobato will consider withdrawing their support for the Tenerife Motor Circuit, refusing to participate in the presentation of the project and showing their predisposition to find a solution that satisfies Tenerife society.
