The expert who advises the Cabildo de Tenerife on the Motor Circuit, Walter Sciacca, is the same one who told the island corporation in 2018 that the work was not viable due to the low purchasing power of the people of Tenerife. “With the salaries on the island, it is difficult for an amateur to be able to afford a day to shoot”, a cost that would be between 600 and 1,000 euros, said the Italian consultant in a report published four years ago by the newspaper Notice Journal.
Tenerife is facing another macro project, a motor circuit “that no one has asked for”
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Even so, the Cabildo de Tenerife contracted for 1.52 million euros in 2020 the company of which Sciacca is the sole administrator, SCT International Motorsport, for advisory services regarding the Motor Circuit, both to ensure that the infrastructure “meets all the technical requirements that allow its commercial exploitation in the market” as well as to “guarantee” that the work will be exploited in “economically profitable terms for the Administration (return on investment and generate wealth on the island)”.
Canarias Now he has contacted one of Sciacca’s partners in the company SCT International Motorsport, Ulises Juan Jurado Ruíz, to find out about the company’s work in relation to this project. However, the Italian consultant, asked by his partner, has alleged a confidentiality clause, “which cannot be skipped”, and has said that “all the work that has been done and is being done is contemplated in the public tender that as such it was published in the official media.”
The Cabildo de Tenerife has also been asked in this regard, specifically the area of Roads, Mobility and Innovation, directed by Enrique Arriaga (Citizens), to find out how the different works and studies on the Motor Circuit carried out by Sciacca in 2018 and for which he received just over 63,000 euros. From the press of the department they respond that they have made a query to the technicians of the section, but that there is still no answer because many of them are on vacation.
Since the Tenerife Motor Circuit was presented in an act with a resounding protestseveral political parties have demanded that the economic feasibility study of a project that will cost 51 million euros for the public coffers be made public, as the insular institution is the promoter of the work.
“We question what the planned management formula will be for the exploitation of this route. We also do not understand why, if this initiative is so interesting, (…) there is no interest from the private company for the execution and subsequent management and maintenance of the circuit”, reproached Carmen Nieves Gaspar, member of New Canary in Tenerife. Podemos Tenerife has also requested the profitability report.
According to the Public Sector Contract Law (LCSP), all works under concession, as the Motor Circuit intends to be, must have a feasibility study carried out prior to any construction. In this analysis, it must detail, among other things, the purpose and justification of the initiative, the forecasts on the demand for use and economic and social impact and the assessment of existing data and reports that refer to sectoral, territorial or regional planning. town. In addition, the granting administration will submit the feasibility study to public information for a period of one month.
The Cabildo de Tenerife, in the documents that it has put on public display this summer on the Motor Circuit, makes no mention of the feasibility or profitability or justification of the initiative. The main supporter of the plan, Enrique Arriaga, recently assured in Radius Brand that “the circuit will be profitable” and that “any losses will be compensated and on top of that there will be profits”, but no study in this regard was mentioned.
At the moment, according to the documentation compiled by this means, there are a minimum of three economic-financial reports from the Motor Circuit (none of them available online). One from 1997, in which “in addition to the economic analysis, possible locations that, due to their characteristics, were likely to host facilities of this type” were delved into. Another from 2009, which according to the Official Gazette of the Canary Islands (BOC) it was submitted to public exhibition and could be consulted in the offices of the Sports Administrative Service of the Cabildo de Tenerife, in the Pabellón Insular Santiago Martín. And the aforementioned by Walter Sciacca, made in 2018.
In that writing, always as published Notice Journalthe Italian consultant acknowledges that there is no “market” or “local media” in Tenerife for the Motor Circuit, so foreign demand would have to be drawn, an average of 4,500 “potential clients” per month more linked to elitist tourism than to that usually arrives at the peaked island.
Other investigations on speed circuits have also concluded that they are not profitable for the local administration. In Navarra, the track for competitions located near the town of Los Arcos has swallowed more than 70 million euros and has led to an operating deficit of five million. The regional government, led by the socialist María Chivite, is trying to sell the circuit, according to reports elDiario.es.
In Aragon, the infrastructure called Ciudad del Motor, SA (Motorland), stars every year unfavorable reports from the community accounts chamber. In 2020, the latest text available, it is detailed that the track obtained losses of 2.28 million euros and that the cause of them, “which are repeated year after year”, is that the income derived from the activities carried out does not cover expenses.
Environmental organizations in the Canary Islands have expressed their disagreement with the current promotion of the Tenerife Motor Circuit at a turbulent time after the coronavirus pandemic. In addition to the more than 50 million euros that its construction will entail, there are the 1.5 million that the Island Council has already disbursed to SCT International Motorsport in consultancy work and the 600,000 euros that the corporation has invested in selling the project.
The social weariness on the island of Tenerife due to the concatenation of macro-projects in the south of Tenerife has caused activists to once again call for the complete stoppage of the Cuna del Alma hotel complex, in Puertito de Adeje, and of the rest of the initiatives.
“We request a radical change in the current development approaches so that they do not endanger the already uncertain future of Tenerife. No further load capacity studies are necessary in the current scenario to know that these proposals are not sustainable and lead us to a dead end that leads us to the abyss”, they warn.