SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, July 31 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The City Council of Santa Cruz de La Palma has agreed today in an extraordinary plenary session the final partial approval of the General Planning Plan (PGO) of the municipality, a document “of vital importance for the future development of the capital of La Palma and which has meant more two decades of work for the drafting of the main planning tool of the municipality.
This was stated at a press conference by the mayor, Asier Antona, who stressed that the public is “in luck” because “they already have in their hands a document adapted to current legislation and that will allow the capital to grow with all the guarantees legal entities that companies, investors and individuals need to develop their activity on the land of our municipal area”.
The Councilor for Town Planning, Bernardo López, has valued “the good predisposition on the part of all the people involved to carry out this fundamental instrument for the economic and social development of the municipality.” And it is that during these more than two decades of improvement of the PGO up to seven mayors have participated (Carlos Cabrera, Juan Ramón Felipe, Anselmo Pestana, Sergio Matos, Juan José Cabrera, Juan José Neris and Asier Antona), town planning councillors, professionals City Council and external writing teams to get to the current point.
This territorial planning tool has a partial application, since the Competent State Administration in Coasts has established some objections in relation to developable land and for which the City Council will immediately start proceedings so that both the State and the Government of the Canary Islands make it possible to solve the problem of developable land and definitively approve the planning planned for them.
HOUSING AND ECONOMIC EXPANSION.
During his appearance, Asier Antona indicated that Santa Cruz de La Palma “is currently undergoing an important and necessary process of transformation and expansion of the municipality with actions at the northern entrance to the city, the industrial zone of Mirca and its seafront with the expansion and improvement works of the second phase of the Avenue”.
Among the priorities and objectives of the current government team is the search for bags of land to allocate them to housing, the lack of which is “an endemic evil” throughout the Island, in order to offer a life project to citizens and avoid the depopulation to other areas.
The land that the PGO classifies as urban -both the consolidated by urbanization and the unconsolidated- allows the growth of Santa Cruz de La Palma in a sufficient way and that together with the developable land that will be approved as soon as possible, facilitating the development of the mesh according to the forecasts of the Corporation’s technicians until reaching the construction of 2,414 homes in the future (700 must be VPP public housing).
With the current PGO, it has also been possible to order an area of cultural interest that was not declared a historical complex in 1975, being left out of the protection that current legislation offered it at the time. It is about the environment that preserves large buildings and spaces, such as the Convent of San Francisco; the church of La Encarnación; Dornajo and Tanquito squares.
RURAL AND AGRICULTURAL SETTLEMENTS.
Asier Antona indicated that since 1999, with the entry into force of the Canary Islands Territorial Planning Law (L9/1999), it had not been possible to build a single single-family home on rural land in Santa Cruz de La Palma. Now, with the entry into force of the PGO that has just been definitively approved, eleven rural settlements and ten agricultural settlements are delimited and the use of single-family housing may be allowed (plots of up to 1,000 square meters in rural settlements and 3,000 square meters in agricultural settlements).
The effects of tourist use may also be displayed in accordance with the Islas Verdes Law (Law 14/2019 on the regulation of tourist activity on the islands of El Hierro, La Gomera and La Palma), without neglecting agricultural activities. typical of the midlands of Santa Cruz de La Palma (low intensity crops and livestock).
The planning of the PGO, which is now approved, integrates the delimitation of protected natural spaces and special conservation areas, respecting the plans and regulations of the autonomous range, which guarantees their management and conservation. Likewise, the regulations of the PGO incorporate all the regulations of direct application of the current Island Planning Plan.
