Development of the Valle de Güímar Industrial Estate began in 1972 and, 40 years later, as stipulated in the agreement, the Mixed Compensation Association (state Sepes, CajaCanarias, Cabildo and Empresarios) had to transfer its management to the three municipalities of the region, owners of the land (Arafo, Candelaria and Güímar), although it was not until July 22, 2013 when it was officially received by the three mayors, when Ricardo Melchior was president of the island.
To achieve this transfer, the town councils received an industrial estate rehabilitated as a whole, after some works that cost no less than nine million euros, and, in addition, each of the town halls received almost one million euros as property, a warehouse in ownership and control of the Chiguengue well. The only condition that the consistories had to face was to create an Urban Conservation Entity (EUC), to maintain the area and monitor it.
Ten years later, this entity has not been created and it is not going to be created, because a few years ago it was decided that the best option, given the divergences of the municipal secretaries and the Cabildo, was the creation of a consortium, in which that the three city councils and the Cabildo itself would be immersed, with the businessmen with a voice but no vote. A consortium that is practically complete, but whose draft has yet to pass the approval of the new island government, as Raquel Malo, president of the Polígono business association, recalled yesterday.
Raquel Malo herself recalls that in these ten years the abandonment of the Polygon has been evident, although she acknowledges that at least the most serious problem has been curbed, the discharges into the sea from the submarine outfall, after the recent construction of the water treatment plant industrialists (Edari) by the Cabildo.
An issue, that of spills, which still has a bunch of politicians on trial, including mayors and Town Planning councillors, although some of them, such as the case of Mari Brito (Candelaria), were not exactly at the reception ten years ago area.
A stop to the discharges has been put, but the same does not happen with the garbage and the abandonment of the gardens, which is once again visible after Arafo attended to that demand for a few months, as Güímar and Candelaria did before. The lack of conservation on the land of Arafo -it has more than 50% of it and is the only one with commercial land- even led the former mayor of Güímar in 2015 to paint a blue stripe to delimit the land of each municipality, to make it clear who kept their house clean and who didn’t.
After the agreement of a phased plan to put an end to the discharges and that of the three town halls with the Cabildo to create a consortium -including the Island Corporation, which would take charge of the sanitation-, the waters returned to their course and it was erased the blue stripe. Now the three consistories were at one and hand in hand with the Insular Corporation they are approaching positions, but even today, ten years after that reception signature, the Industrial Park suffers abandonment again, with garbage on the sidewalks, trees that invade the road , roundabouts like jungles and, to top it off, the transporters of the 250 companies that work there, angry one day in and another because of the tremendous traffic jams that form at the roundabout at the entrance to Arafo, through El Carretón, increased by the installation of four large commercial areas (Mercadona, Hiperdino, Aldi and Lidl).
“We have presented a study with possible solutions for the entrance and exit of the Polygon”, commented Raquel Malo, but “we have not had an answer”. Meanwhile, a bridge that goes nowhere is a daily witness to this traffic chaos.