Hoteliers regret the precautionary suspension of the Cuna del Alma project

Although it is still a precautionary measure, the president of the Tenerife hotel association laments the uncertainty generated for investors by first passing through an aboriginal vestige and now through a protected plant. Without going into the background of the reasons that lead to the precautionary suspension of the work, Marichal does not hide his discomfort because the damage that the stoppage will cause is not taken into account if the 350 million euros that it costs to do are finally lost. reality of this project.

For the president of the hotel management, «It had to have been foreseen from the technicians who assessed and carried out the studies and not now be faced with a work that threatens that it cannot be carried out». Jorge Marichal acknowledges that the worst of this type of situation is the “legal insecurity in which foreign investors find themselves” who have opted for the Puertito de Adeje for the construction of Cuna del Alma.

Now it is time to verify whose responsibility it is so that the promoters do not see themselves unprotected, It is necessary to review the responsibility of both the owners and the administrations that issue the corresponding licenses. “In the end, with so many administrations involved in granting permits, it only takes between ten or fifteen years and then they can find themselves immersed in this confusion that not only threatens execution but also endangers investment”, adds the president of the hotel association.

Jorge Marichal’s statements add to the discomfort and indignation shown days ago by the president of the CEOE, Pedro Alfonso, who assures that “the decision of the Canarian Government demonstrates the legal insecurity in which we live”, while for the head of Fepeco these situations “stamp the investors of Tenerife and Canary Islands and, at the same time, they force to indemnify».

The president of Fepeco assures that “it will be the courts that make a decision”, although he believes that “we are not facing a media anecdote”, since “decisions like this impoverish Tenerife and make it impossible to attract investment to create social wealth and job for the Island.”

Pedro Alfonso, head of CEOE, called for “beyond the tax benefits offered by the Island, with the stoppage of the construction of the Cuna del Alma tourist complex, Tenerife projects the image that the administration does not work here, that the bureaucracy goes against any business interest and that in Tenerife the management of the Environment goes against sustainable development».

The reason for the stoppage

The Ministry of Ecological Transition, Fight against Climate Change and Territorial Planning of the Canarian Government made public last Friday its decision to provisionally paralyze the works of the Cuna del Alma tourist project, in Puertito de Adeje, in the south of Tenerife. The reason, the presence of specimens of the sad viborine plant (Echium triste), for which it is understood that the works “pose an imminent threat of environmental damage to protected wild flora”, as denounced by the Salvar la Tejita Association. Of course, the precautionary suspension occurs a year and a half after the work began and four months after the firm stoppage of the works that affected 2 percent of the scope of the project.

While Ecological Transition does not authorize the promoter of the project -Segunda Casa Adeje SL- to proceed with the transplant of the plant because the established causes of exceptionality do not concur, the investors will allege and are already studying to claim the rights acquired by having the mandatory licenses that conditioned the development of these works in the Puertito de Adeje.

According to data from the Secretary of State for Commerce, dependent on the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, the investment of 350 million euros to make Cuna del Alma a reality –according to the initial amount, which is always usual to increase these estimates– is equivalent to all foreign capital invested in the Canary Islands since 2020, when foreign investment fell to less than eighty million due to the incidence of the pandemic, and the following year it rose to 87 million, which is added to the 215.8 million expected in the first quarter of this year, even when the information that work held by the Secretary of State.

The first procedures aimed at making Cuna del Alma a reality began in 1986, referring to the El Puertito de Adeje partial plan, although it was on December 18, 1991 when it received final approval, which achieved the Cotmac agreement on April 29. 1998. It is then that the promoters begin the procedures to constitute the compensation board that is constituted in 1999. Already nine years later the basic adaptation of the General Plan of Adeje is approved and in 2014 the modification of the PGO that reviews the Cotmac .