30 years ago Law 5/1992 was approved to organize the El Rincón area, in La Orotava. In 1997, the El Rincón Special Plan was definitively approved with a wording so close to a Bolivarian regime that fortunately its execution has been and will be unviable, at least as long as private property and economic freedom exist in this land.
The Special Plan contemplates different actions such as a diffuse hotel, a campsite or an equestrian center, initiatives that, managed from the public, would generate an income that would be redistributed among the owners. Simply idyllic. Fortunately, no initiative has been able to be translated into reality. The management model, as of today and with a retrospective view, can at least be classified as naive. The Law states that “in order to guarantee the maintenance of the agricultural values of El Rincón, actions of a socioeconomic nature will be proposed that serve to compensate the local community and the activities affected by the established protection.”
Needless to say, in these long years, the “local community and the activities affected”, meaning the owners, have not been compensated a single cent, quite the opposite. We have been ignored by the closest politicians and technicians, abandoned in a corner without decent municipal services. They have looked the other way due to the commitment to bury the “provisional” electrical lines that fly over in the direction of Puerto de la Cruz. There is no sanitation and they have made all urban planning procedures unbearably difficult for the owners. In short, it is possible here to claim damages for lost profits, to which we will give the due judicial process.
The area of El Rincón is suspended until the corresponding special territorial plan is approved, which led to the approval of the General Plan of La Orotava being only partial, according to the Cotmac agreement of February 2, 2004. The wording of the plan special territorial plan, which had a period of three years for approval, has the important objective of adapting the El Rincón Special Plan to current regulations. With this background it is understood that, already tired, in April 2022 the Owners’ Association will present a letter to the Consortium requesting that it adapt the Special Plan. We consider that it is obsolete and that, although the objective of the Law is plausible, the planning, expropriation and redistributive intervention intended by a Plan drafted under an out-of-time interventionist mentality is not.
In 2017, with the entry into force of the new Law on Soil and Natural Spaces of Canary Islands, the El Rincón Plan has remained, even more so, in a legal limbo that is uninterpretable by the officials themselves. Sufficient as an example is the request for an opinion that Gesplan made in 2000 to Professor Luciano Parejo Alfonso. The Rincón Owners Association has repeatedly demanded an in-depth review of the Plan. We are facing a blockage in which those responsible for promoting the execution of the Plan see in it an evident legal uncertainty and a difficult fit with current regulations.
In view of the inactivity of both the Consortium and the different public institutions that comprise it, we challenged the Plan before the Contentious Court, without to date having received any response from the institutions directly involved: the Government of the Canary Islandsthe Cabildo of Tenerife or the La Orotava City Council. It is these three administrations that on September 22 congratulated themselves on the provision of a digital platform to those affected to manage all matters of El Rincón and its Special Plan. It is embarrassing that they congratulate themselves for having ignored their responsibility: to adapt the plan in a timely manner to current regulations, through the approval of the corresponding Special Territorial Plan, as contemplated in the Planning Report of the PGO of La Orotava (2004). They thus consider that after 26 years it can be said without embarrassment that “coordination and cooperation between all the agents involved is essential, where the public company Gesplán plays a decisive role in completing the adaptation and updating of the El Rincón Special Plan.” Well not again. This time we are not going to believe it. The El Rincón Coordinator, an environmental group represented in the Consortium, responds to the previous note and shows its concern about the “exploitation conditions of the agricultural farms in the protected space”, charging them with a responsibility that as owners we will have to fulfill, ” the achievement of food sovereignty” and “alleviate, at least in part, some of the problems linked to the climate crisis…”. As if this objective were not relevant, they add that our crops must be the “pantry for the population of La Orotava.” Without a doubt, they reiterate an interventionist vision, in line with the drafters of the Plan, in which private property is limited.
Let me explain, it is evident that if our potential market is reduced to the inhabitants of the municipality, our gross income will be affected since the equilibrium price will always be lower than that of an open market. In the 18th century, the Scottish Adam Smith was already surprised by the exquisite efficiency of free markets. Let’s simplify regulations and let the invisible hand of the market act. Only those who have not read the work of the economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek – I recommend The Road to Serfdom – will ponder, even from his best intentions, that interference of this nature will have positive repercussions on the viability of our crops. And the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
We do not even dispute that this could happen, but please, without planning, laissez faire, laissez passer, and if you want it, with clear compensation for the loss of income, of course. Thus, the Coordinator’s proposal is for us at the very least anachronistic and dictatorial. Surprisingly, this same association congratulates itself on the resumption of the Consortium’s activity, even knowing that since 2017 the only thing that this entity has tangibly promoted has been a staircase to go down to Los Patos beach, a measure that coincidentally is very popular. We propose to the Coordinator that it forces the pharmacies of the Valley to dispense medicines only to the inhabitants of La Orotava and thus avoid any risk of shortages and promote a kilometer 0 economy.
They should even force a multinational pharmaceutical company to establish itself in the municipality to guarantee our supply, since, as the environmental association fears, we must be prepared for the risk of new pandemics that could close supply channels. We are agricultural entrepreneurs, and we recognize and assume our social and environmental responsibility, but we also have to be economically viable, and it is this delicate point that we have been discussing for only 26 years.
Who invests in El Rincón with the current legal uncertainty? And the Coordinator does not want to see or hear this, which probably in its firm immobility considers this permanent blockade a success. We have already made an effort to bring together positions from a working group, Friends of El Rincón. We held meetings and moved forward, but when the Owners’ Association came to the conclusion that a thorough review of the Plan was necessary, they were stuck on the 1992 photo. We can agree with the Coordinator on the need for agricultural infrastructure, management of water, a differentiated brand or proposals that accelerate a transition to more accurate and technical organic agriculture. But the sad reality is that in these 26 years we have not talked for a minute about agriculture, ethnography or landscape in the Consortium meetings. So, why does the Consortium exist if everything it has carried out is strictly municipal works and there is none that, due to its uniqueness, can be included in the very special framework of the El Rincón Law?
Time, work, meetings, paying fees to maintain the Group and 26 lost years. How many illusions have remained on paper. For farmers, time is not trivial. We cannot accelerate the development of a plant like someone who revolutionizes a engine. Agriculture has its times, it makes the farmer a patient, observant and persevering person, but understand that even the farmer has a limit. So we have already decided that it is over, that the pond has overflowed, that the water is being wasted and now we are obliged to act for the future of El Rincón, which is our future.
