A few months ago, the mayor of Granadilla de Abona sounded the alarm about the delay in the resolution of major construction licenses in her municipality. Jennifer Miranda explained that she had found herself facing an administrative funnel in which individuals enter and take up to three years to exit, without obtaining an answer about what happens to the projects they have undertaken. That is, businessmen and citizens wait without knowing what the Administration will say about the investments they want to make in the construction of their house, a complex of homes, hotels or any other.
Many millions of euros paralyzed, mainly in the municipalities where the situation is worse, in this order: Arona, Granadilla itself and Arico. Each one with a different casuistry. Adeje, example of good management On the opposite side, Adeje, which builders consider a management model, in which the legally established times are met in a timely manner. The legislation is clear. The application for a major work license is mandatory in the cases established. For example, the construction and rehabilitation of a building should not take more than three months to resolve, a deadline that almost no city council meets. Delays cause harm to those who intend to start economic activity, to companies linked to the project, cause overpricing (for example, for those who buy a home) and damage the income flow of the Administration itself.
Given this situation, in many municipalities in the south of Tenerife investors are making decisions to leave in search of other places. The closest ones are to neighboring municipalities, such as Adeje or San Miguel de Abona. The furthest away, Morocco. As for destinations within Spain, municipalities on the coast of the province of Malaga. This is explained by the president of the Provincial Federation of Construction Entities of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Fepeco), Óscar Izquierdo. “The Administration does not work well” “We have millions of euros on the tables of officials,” says Izquierdo, for whom “the Administration itself is paralyzing activity and growth. It must be reformed because it is incapable of functioning diligently. The municipality with the most dramatic situation is Arona and, later, Granadilla de Abona and Arico,” he assures. In the last two cases, he considers that the problem is management.
Regarding Granadilla, he says that “we are very hopeful about the new municipal government and that it can resolve all the licenses. Granadilla has enormous potential and has the dimensions to have an Urban Planning Management with all the instruments and specialized technical personnel.” “Arico,” he adds, “has become an attractive municipality for investment, but it does not have sufficient structure to obtain licenses in a timely manner,” says Izquierdo. Arona is a separate case.
The president of Fepeco considers that it is a municipality weighed down “by decades of political frenzy and with a very complicated judicial situation, which has had an enormous impact” on its urban situation. “The partial El Mojón plan, which would make Arona the economic capital of Tenerife, takes longer than the pyramids of Egypt,” he says, to remember the “serious housing situation in the South.” “We have asked the Government of the Canary Islands to reform the public administration, so that it provides the town councils with the personnel to resolve the licenses” that now take several years. “They are also delayed – he remembers – due to other Administrations. Because of the time it takes for reports from others, such as the Executive itself or the councils, to be evacuated.”
“The South suffers a housing emergency situation: there are no homes”
The president of the provincial construction association (Fepeco), Óscar Izquierdo, is very clear that “the south of Tenerife is experiencing a housing emergency” due to the lack of housing, with a need for “thousands” of them for “the workers in the tourism sector”, many of whom are forced to sleep in their vehicles, such as cars and vans, as this newspaper revealed weeks ago.
In his opinion, when those who work in a place are forced to live many kilometers away, the now classic queues occur on the highway, the TF-1, in addition to accidents.
“The Administration must facilitate citizens’ access to fundamental rights, such as housing. But in this case it is not that it does not do it, but it is the main obstacle,” says Óscar Izquierdo, who compares the efforts of two neighboring municipalities with two diametrically opposed situations, such as Adeje and Arona.
“They are neighbors and in one -Arona- it takes three years to get the major construction licenses completed, while in the other everything is done perfectly,” he indicates. “There you can see,” he adds, “that in politics the person counts a lot,” in relation to the mayor of Adeje, José Miguel Rodríguez Fraga.
Two municipalities with the same laws
“We must keep in mind that both are governed by the same laws and, however, in one it is impossible and in the other everything turns out perfectly,” he emphasizes. The president of Fepeco insists that it is absolutely necessary to undertake the reform of the public administration of the Canary Islands, so that the management of the town councils in urban planning matters ceases to be a failed issue. And that in this model the Government must provide the municipalities with technicians.
