The The work of the municipal pool of La Guancha was completed in February 2019 with a controversial act organized by the Cabildo, which was not attended by the local government group (PP). The City Council maintains that it was forced by the previous island government to receive the work three years and eight months ago, despite the fact that the project “was not yet finished” and has required numerous subsequent actions. Now the Consistory has just received a transfer of 758,000 euros from the Council of Tenerife to urbanize the entire environment of this sports complex and move towards an opening to the public that the mayor, Antonio Hernández (PP), acknowledges will not arrive before 2024.
During this mandate, various actions have been carried out in the pool and its surroundings, such as the repair of the leaks in the main pool, the skate park, the calisthenics circuit and the necessary equipment to start up this sports complex, which did not have equipment to do exercise, lockers, access turnstile, customer service desk or surveillance cameras, among many other issues. With the building completed, efforts are focused on the surroundings, which continue to be a plot of land with no paving, sidewalks or lighting.
Antonio Hernández considers it “very good news” that the Cabildo de Tenerife has already paid the La Guancha City Council “the 758,000 euros necessary to tender the urbanization of the accesses to the pool.” The municipality hopes to have the specifications finished this month and put the works out to tender “very soon”, whose execution period is one year. The remainder of 2022 and 2023 will be lost in this administrative and work execution process, so the realistic horizon to finally see the guanchera pool open is in the year 2024.
Hernandez appreciates that «Pedro Martín (PSOE) has given us the money that Carlos Alonso (CC) did not want to give us in 2019, when he organized that inauguration. Since then, we have been waiting for these funds.” In 2021 there was an island budget commitment of 490,000 euros, which in 2022 has risen to 758,000, “which allows us to assume both the construction management and the execution.”
“We had a building without access for political reasons and now, finally, we will be able to carry out the necessary works so that the neighbors can enjoy the pool, although it will not be before 2024,” he warns. The objective of the Consistory assuming the direct management of the facilities is maintained, “through the provision of complementary services such as maintenance, lifeguards or sports activities.”
The mayor is confident that the management of this sports complex will not become an economic burden for this town of just 5,500 inhabitants and highlights the commitment to energy efficiency in the building: “It has photovoltaic panels and a system that takes advantage of the heat from the air to try to maintain the temperature of the water.
Antonio Hernández (PP) thanks the Cabildo de Tenerife for great investment made in this sports complex and insists that the current situation, With the deficiencies and pending work, it shows that he was not wrong when he refused to attend the public presentation of “an unfinished work”, on February 28, 2019, on the eve of two electoral processes. “Time has proved me right and it is clear that not attending that event was not a capricious matter, I simply did not want to enter the game of deceiving the neighbors by presenting something that was still going to take years to open,” he stressed. . In the best of cases, this complex could be available to the guancheros five years after that photo.
The Cabildo de Tenerife invested in this work of more than 2.6 million euros and maintained a dispute with the construction company to repair deficiencies that were considered to be in the warranty period. It was necessary to fix all the leaks that were produced by the poor waterproofing of the Munich-type overflows, which carried the water through the structure and fell to the lower floors, and the final layer of the entire exterior overhang roof, which began to fall months after the works were finished. With these 758,000 euros to urbanize the area, the Cabildo’s total investment in this sports facility will exceed 3,358,000 euros, about 610 euros for each resident of La Guancha.
