A total of 154 scientists and technicians have signed a document that has been sent to the presidents of the Canary Islands and the Cabildo de Tenerife, as well as the mayor of Adeje, in which they request the definitive stoppage of Cradle of the Soul and the restoration of the space in which the works have been carried out.
The petition, indicate the promoters of the initiative, is signed exclusively by “qualified people” in one of the fields linked to the project: professionals in Biology (19%), History, Geography and Archeology (12%), Tourism (11% ), Economics (10%), Environmental Education (9%), Anthropology (8%) and Law (5%).
Among the signatories are researchers and university professors such as the professors of the University of La Laguna Federico Aguilera Klink (Applied Economics, National Prize for Economics and Environment 2004, retired); Alberto Galván Tudela (honorary of Social Anthropology); José María Fernández-Palacios (Ecology); Elena Sánchez Jordán (Civil Law); Juan Sánchez García (Economics, retired) and Serafín Corral Quintana (Applied Economics).
To them are added the doctors and professors of the ULL in Archeology, Cristo M. Hernández Gómez; Economy, Rosa María Lorenzo Alegría, Cándido Román Cervantes, Francisco Javier Amador Morera, Yeray Hernández González; Geography, Irène Dupuis, Luis Manuel Jerez Darias, Mercedes Arranz Lozano, Víctor Onésimo Martín Martín; Biology, Victoria Eugenia Martín; Anthropology –with a specialization in Heritage and Tourism– Ramón Hernández Armas, from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), and the doctor and professor of Geography Mercedes de los Ángeles Rodríguez.
Also noteworthy is the participation of ornithologist and naturalist Rubén Barone, member of the ULL Interuniversity Research Group on Island Ecology and Biogeography; the retired architect, former director of the Rural Park of Teno, Abel Herrera García, the retired doctor of Biology José García Casanova, the lawyer Pedro Fernández Arcila, the expert in sustainable tourism Jonay Izquierdo Trujillo and the ULL geographer and high school professor Juan Diego lover.
In addition to the definitive stoppage of the project and the restoration of the space to its original state, they request the revision of the general plan of Adeje so that the conservation of “a space with high environmental and heritage values” is allowed.
Among the arguments that support this petition, they argue that in the administrative processing of the project “they omitted decisive information” regarding the cultural and natural heritage in the area.
For this reason, the signatories consider that the authorizations should be “reconsidered” and new official studies should be carried out, “with more guarantees than the previous ones.”
In addition, they emphasize that the space occupied by this tourist project is “one of the last traditional coastal redoubts in the southwest of Tenerife, it has a high scenic value and also its implementation would negatively affect the contiguous protected natural spaces”, the Site of Scientific Interest of La Caleta and the ZEC Teno-Rasca Maritime Strip.
This initiative was born on October 20 from “the conviction that it is possible and desirable to contribute to a true sustainable development of Tenerife with projects that do not imply a deterioration of the insular heritage and to support initiatives in favor of the real diversification of the Tenerife economy and the Canary Islands and the independence from abroad so as to avoid the increase of a tourist accommodation plant already disproportionate in relation to the surface and population of the Island and its natural resources”.
All this, accompanied by “a reflection on the fact that the necessary legal certainty is not achieved when the serious errors that occurred in the authorization process of this project are committed, and it is achieved with rigorous compliance with legal procedures, without ignoring those mistakes”.