Ramón Trujillo, candidate of United Sí Podemos (the coalition of parties between Sí se puede, Izquierda Unida and Podemos) for mayor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, accuses the mayor and CC candidate of being “the number one public enemy of historical heritage and, on top of that, having the shamelessness of setting himself up as the guarantor of his recovery”.
Trujillo reveals that due to “the inability and incompetence” of the Bermúdez government, 12 properties proposed to be cataloged in the new catalog in process agreed at a technical level between the City Council and the Tenerife Cabildo, will be demolished because their owners have managed to get the judges to give the reason, because the legal term of precautionary protection has elapsed.
In addition to warning that a “massive destruction of historical heritage” is coming, the leader of United Sí Podemos promises that, if he governs, “he will prioritize the approval of the new catalog to prevent Bermúdez’s strategy from causing the destruction of dozens of buildings with heritage values, which requires the immediate expediting of the procedure and shortening the terms to the minimum legally permitted”.
And it is that, despite the social and political controversy that in the past mandate caused the demolition of historic buildings proposed to be cataloged by the Cabildo, in June 2022 the deadline given by the current Canary Islands Cultural Heritage Law to update the patrimonial protection catalogues.
Now, the local government chaired by the CC candidate, a “heritage killer” party in Santa Cruz, has issued an instruction that only validates the list of the catalog of the Basic Adaptation of the General Planning Plan of 2005, before the cancellation of the planning of 2013. This means that, “due to the incompetence of Bermúdez”, the owners of hundreds of properties that are proposed to be protected, can request a demolition license.
In this way, what the mayor is doing is “creating a regulatory vacuum and now giving a clear and forceful incentive to the massive destruction of historical heritage before it is protected with the new catalogue.”
If we look back, Trujillo abounds, “no one has caused more damage to heritage in the last 13 years than Bermúdez”, for whom only “properties whose emblematic value and protection already enjoy consensus are historical heritage, as is the case of the Palacio de Carta or Viera y Clavijo, but instead look the other way at those privately owned that are proposed to be catalogued, many hundreds.
As a “necessary collaborator, it has the PP, for whom it was a good idea to widen the Rambla by demolishing part of the Plaza de Toros, and when the Cabildo and the Canarian Government want to expand a Historic Site, Bermúdez is ready to resort to it.”
Finally, Trujillo wonders “what strange kind of nationalist is who, instead of loving and defending the cultural heritage of the Canarian people, abandons it to its fate and to urban speculation, as CC has done in Santa Cruz in a shameless way ”. “For those nationalisms, those saddlebags were not needed,” ironically the candidate of the confluence of the alternative left.
