La Laguna regulates street sales with Christmas and Valentine’s markets

The City Hall of La Lagunathrough its area of ​​Commerce and Economic Development, has presented the initiative “Christmas and Valentine’s Markets”, a pilot project to regulate the activity of street vendors in the municipality.

The councilor responsible for the area, Aitami Bruno, explained in a statement that in November 2019 the ordinance of street and non-sedentary vending was approved, which came into force at the beginning of 2020 and “was intended to adapt to the local level the regulations of street commerce and order it, taking into account all the interests that concur: consumers, neighbors and vendors”.

In this way, the regulations establish that when the sale is made in public spaces, the land is of general interest, and therefore requires prior approval.

“Being the soil of La Laguna limitedit was necessary to establish a procedure so that all people can access authorizations on an equal basis”, Bruno indicated.

This procedure could not be carried out in 2020 due to the pandemic, so “now that we are back on the streets it is time to carry out this activity”, as defended by the mayor.

In this sense, at the beginning of last November of this year, the consistory opened a public call with 145 market places available in four locations in the municipality: San Benito, La Cuesta, Taco and Valle de Guerra.

“Finally, 97 applications were submitted, all of them being admitted and distributed in 41 posts in La Cuesta, 36 in Valle de Guerra and 20 in Taco, leaving San Benito out of the initiative because the demand was covered with the three previous areas”, has explained the councilor.

Likewise, he highlighted that 80% of the attendees are linked to the Roma people, “so with this action we also want to contribute to the achievement of the objectives promoted by the Municipal Board of the Roma People of La Laguna to promote social development and economy and equal rights of the Roma population”.

The “Christmas and Valentine’s Markets” project will take place every Saturday simultaneously at the four aforementioned points, between December 10 and February 14, and on January 2, 3, 4 and 5, coinciding with with the campaign of Kings.

Bruno has remarked that it is a pilot project to assess its feasibility and analyze its possible permanent implementation: “Once the end of February 14, it will be assessed whether we will maintain the markets for the rest of the year or not.”