Town Hall and residents of San Juan de la Rambla have come together to request that the current project of the Insular Ring stops in the municipality of La Guancha until new alternatives are analyzed for the section that affects the municipality, with a great environmental and landscape impact in the area of the slopes, known as Los Alenes.
The proposal is not new, but it is the renewed impetus to it by the hand of a new neighborhood platform and the explicit support of the Consistory. The current government group has already requested it due to the unanimous rejection of the entire municipal Corporation and even presented allegations in this sense so that the route is buried and does not affect the coast, but it did not receive a response and neither did it respond to its requests.
Now, with this background, the residents of the municipality have wanted to join, who have constituted the platform San Juan de la Rambla has an alternative to avoid what they consider an environmental “attack”.
They clarify, just as the mayor, Ezequiel Domínguez, did at the time, that they are not opposed to the project, since they are aware of the need to seek alternatives to mobility, but they consider that San Juan de la Rambla-Los Realejos should be treated as a single action, with an underground section, as agreed for this last municipality, “not like now that it remains hanging in the first and we don’t know what will happen in the future.” And the citizens want proposals that point in that direction.
alternatives
“We understand that the Island Ring must be done, but not that way,” says Mariví Martínez García, a member of the platform. That is why they propose that the work be carried out from El Empalme to the projected roundabout in La Guancha, near the Clean Point, and stop there to later agree with the local administrations involved, the social and neighborhood groups, a new tunnel route, as a only action unit, from that roundabout to Los Realejos. “The entire area of Las Ramblas would remain as a pedestrian street and it would be a wonderful walk,” she says.
The aforementioned platform invites the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Housing to work on the San Juan de la Rambla-Los Realejos option jointly and applauds the fact that the administrations want to provide solutions for the island’s mobility. The mayor agrees with the neighbors. For him, the most reasonable thing is to leave the approach in La Guancha “and that in the future the complete closure between San Juan de la Rambla and Los Realejos be definitively faced with the millions that are necessary, because we are talking about the same environment and we work so that the environmental impact between both municipalities is as little as possible”.
Domínguez requested a meeting 15 days ago with the director in charge, Sebastián Franquis, and with the General Director of Infrastructures of the Government of the Canary Islands, José Luis Delgado, in which two members of the new platform and another two from each of the political parties that make up the Plenary, which in December 2021 unanimously agreed to say no to this proposal as the only alternative, “but yes to the Ring”, he insisted.
A new platform is born to avoid “an ecological attack”
“Come back again.” That was what the residents thought when they verified that the project for the Insular Ring in its section through San Juan de la Rambla was the same as the one that had been discarded in the past for being “too aggressive” for the territory.
“We were surprised to see that Los Realejos is on hold, but San Juan de la Rambla continues, with viaducts over the Las Aguas area, in Los Alenes, where the royal road that came from La Laguna was located,” says Mariví Martínez.
Faced with this reality and an ecological attack that they want to avoid and that future generations would not forgive, they consider that “there are other alternatives” to respect a municipality that has natural values that are in everyone’s interest to preserve. Therefore, they decided to unite on a platform to fight. “Our strength is that we all go together, the City Council and the neighbors”, he affirms.
