Environmental organizations warn about the rise of illegal buildings in the south of Tenerife in protected rustic spaces, especially in the mediocrities, where the presence of containers, caravans and wooden houses continues to grow throughout the region. “We take the only thing we have left and tremendous environmental damage is being caused,” they denounce.
In statements to DIARIO DE AVISOS, Jaime Coello, director of the Telesforo Bravo-Juan Coello Foundation, described the level of occupation between 200 and 600 meters above sea level as “fierce”: “Rustic land is being destroyed, we are finishing with the next strip of land that we could occupy after the siltation of the coast, but now we are going even higher”.
In his opinion, the problem has worsened in recent years due to the “enormous demographic pressure” that Tenerife is enduring, for which he reproaches the public administrations for their “lack of will” to put an end to this situation. “They are not doing enough to create the framework that allows adequate growth for the Island’s resources,” he maintains.
Several city councils have already expressed their concern to this newspaper about the boom in buildings on prohibited land through the illegal parceling of rural land to subsequently convert it into developable land through the deeds. Some municipalities have warned that foreign citizens have been victims of “deception.” “They sell them protected land, telling them that it can be built,” one of the municipal councilors told DIARIO DE AVISOS, who recommended inquiring in the town halls before closing any purchase.
The Telesforo Bravo-Juan Coello Foundation sees “shared responsibilities” when considering that foreign citizens “have a duty to find out what type of property they are buying” and warns that “some think that everything can be done here, and in that they have much blame the neglect of public administrations when it comes to fulfilling their functions.
infractions
The Agency for the Protection of the Natural Environment, in charge of controlling the urban and environmental discipline of the Islands, opened more than 1,500 infraction files last year, of which more than half corresponded to illegal construction of houses. Sanctions can reach 300,000 euros in very serious cases. The Government of the Canary Islands emphasizes that the correct path for the reclassification of land established by law is through planning.
For Coello, “you have to act much faster when non-compliances are detected and not allow the flattening of land, because these reparcellings entail the elimination of the digital cover and the fauna of the area.”
It must be remembered that the Canarian Agency for the Protection of the Natural Environment intervened at the end of last year, at the request of the Arona City Council, in an illegal subdivision of 150,000 square meters of rustic land for agrarian protection in Lomo Negro. Three plots of land, owned by the same company, were sealed and the facts were reported to the Prosecutor’s Office.
For his part, Eustaquio Villalba, spokesman for the Tenerife Association of Friends of Nature (ATAN), attributes the proliferation of illegal developments to the “interested neglect” of public administrations and recalls that most of this type of development, in midlands and areas closer to the coast, does not have sanitation, “since it is expensive, and it has been resolved by allowing cesspools, which is a very polluting element.”
In Villalba’s opinion, the current occupation of the territory is a “very serious” problem, but he insists that it is not a new phenomenon. “It is the consequence of a way of doing politics based on caciquismo and the search for the vote to ensure power at the cost of the destruction of a large part of our territory,” he emphasized.
