The proliferation of caravans, motorhomes, or other camperized vehicles during the past Easter week resulted in chaos due to overcrowding when parking and complaints from residents in several municipalities of Tenerife, especially in the south. It is not a new issue, but it is innovative that municipalities like Arico specifically point to the Cabildo as responsible for regulating the traffic and parking of these vehicles. The vice president of the Island Corporation, Lope Afonso, picks up the challenge and ensures that the task is there, and they are studying potential locations on the Island to create specific spaces for camping for the many people, increasingly, who share this caravaning passion.
Afonso acknowledges that “it is evident that camping and enjoying it through the use of motorhomes has been a growing activity in Tenerife for some time.” He emphasizes that “to the point of generating certain tensions at times in coastal or rural areas.”
The PP leader in the Cabildo warns that “we start from the premise that the regulation of the parking spaces they may have is eminently a municipal competence.”
However, Afonso announces that “we are working on providing solutions for the activity to be carried out in an orderly and reasonable manner.” Therefore, he values, “since the last term, the Territorial Planning department began to prepare the necessary preliminary studies to address a consistent regulation on the Island” A diagnosis that identifies the locations with the highest density of users and, in addition, the suitable land to place the most suitable sites.
They also promoted the drafting of an island ordinance that, as the Tourism councillor explains, “should serve to organize the activity, given its recreational nature.” He also recalls that “recently, the department took over the development of the network of parking and night-stay points that will definitively provide suitable sites for campers to have the necessary facilities and services.” The goal is “to prevent further saturation and tension situations like those we have been seeing in recent years.”
An Embryonic Project
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On May 13th of last year, just days before the local elections on 28M, the then president of the Cabildo in office, Pedro Martín (PSOE), presented a Motorhome Plan project for 350 vehicles. He stated that there was interest in locating six areas for parking and overnight stays in Granadilla de Abona, Arico, Los Silos, Arona, Icod de Los Vinos, and La Laguna. The construction and provision cost for these spaces was estimated at ten million Euros.
Only the Icod area would be in the inland, while the location of the other five would be along the coast. They would have green areas, electrical points for charging, shade in the plots, evacuation of wastewater (grey and black), common spaces and services, toilets, and changing rooms.
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The intention was to meet the increasing demand for family tourism through agreements with municipalities for the transfer of land to carry out the conditioning to provide all services to these areas. The then Socialist candidate announced that they were simultaneously working on the preparation of an island ordinance to regulate the activity, which, once completed, would be made available to all municipalities for adoption in their territories as a way to organize and regulate the growing caravaning trend.
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