There will be an extraordinary plenary session in the City Council of La Laguna at the request of the Canary Coalition (CC), the first group in opposition. But it will no longer have the depth charge that the formation intended when it asserted its right for the Corporation to convene an extraordinary session to address the illegal works undertaken by the mayor and by the president of the Parliament of the Canary Islands in their respective homes. If initially the agreement to be adopted was to urge “the opening and urgent processing of two sanctioning procedures for the urban planning files opened for the illegal works carried out in their homes by the residents of La Laguna, Mr. Luis Yeray Domínguez and Mr. Gustavo Matos ”, Canary Coalition has been backing down as the secretary of the City Council has warned its councilors that the adoption of an agreement in these terms could lead to criminal liability for those who voted in favor.
The former Canarian president Fernando Clavijo has an illegal swimming pool in the patio of his protected house in La Laguna
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For this reason, the municipal group of CC-PNC has been adapting its demands to current legislation. After the first request, dated October 18, with a high charge of accusation and pointing out those specific residents of the city, in a second letter, registered ten days later, despite the fact that it introduced the nuance that the agreement that was adopted in that plenary session adhered to the “urgent opening and processing of urban sanctioning procedures established by law, to known cases and publicly announced their non-priority”, they insisted again on pointing out the two offenders, who were added the name of a third person, the Councilor for Culture Yaiza López, wife of the mayor.
This second attempt was a reaction to a first report from the secretary of the plenary session of the La Laguna City Council, on October 21, in which it was concluded that the intention of the Canarian Coalition to propose “an agreement ad hoc only referring to three neighbors violates the principle of equality, in addition to the right of defense of those referred to”.
According to the municipal secretary, the requirement of CC would also violate the Law of Common Administrative Procedure of Public Administrations, which in its article 71.2 establishes that in the dispatch of administrative files the strict order of initiation in matters of a homogeneous nature will be kept. “.
At the meeting of spokespersons on November 4, the municipal secretary raised the same question again with the CC spokesperson, Jonathan Domínguez, who was severely warned about the responsibilities that those councilors who voted favorably for an agreement that violates current legislation. “The members of local corporations are subject to civil and criminal liability for acts and omissions carried out in the exercise of their duties. The responsibilities will be demanded before the competent courts of justice and will be processed by the applicable ordinary procedure,” the high-ranking municipal official left in writing.
“One thing is the obligation to convene, celebrate, debate and vote in plenary session and another thing is the content of the agreements to be adopted,” the secretary emphasizes in his latest report.
These warnings forced the Canary Coalition to present the same day 4, last Friday, a new letter, the third, which bears a very eloquent title: “Reformulation of the request for extraordinary plenary session: opening of sanctioning urban procedures”. In this new petition, the signatory councilors completely withdraw the names of the public officials to whom they directed their demands to limit themselves to requesting that the plenary session urge “the Municipal Planning Department to proceed to comply with the Land Law and Protected Natural Spaces of the Canary Islands that specifies that the power to sanction urban planning is inexcusable (…) and therefore any complaint for urban planning infraction (…) must be processed within a period of six months”. And he ends the letter by saying “that the aforementioned obligation be fulfilled, as is the case with all citizens based on article 14 of the Spanish Constitution, which determines equality before the Law.”
However, the express request to sanction three specific residents of the city, specifically its mayor, its councilor for Culture and the president of the Parliament of the Canary Islands, and also taking into account the principle of equality before the law, would oblige the Urban Planning Department to sanction more than 2,000 offenders registered in the city of La Laguna.
Clavijo does not open to Urbanism technicians
The request for an extraordinary plenary session to point out those urban offenders was formulated by the Canarian Coalition 48 hours after it became known through a news from the Canary Islands Now that the general secretary of that party, senator for the Autonomous Community and next candidate for the presidency of the Government, Fernando Clavijo, has an illegal swimming pool in the patio of his house, located in the historic center of La Laguna.
Three weeks after the city’s Urban Planning Department opened a file to verify these illegalities, its technicians have still not been able to access the home of the former mayor of La Laguna. A first date has been given various excuses for not accessing that technical visit. Finally, notification attempts by the City Council are no longer attended to at home, which has resorted to electronic communication, whose deadlines will delay the inspection, in the best of cases, until next week.
