The Adeje City Council is set to endorse the partial plan for Hoya Grande this Friday, which plans to establish an area of 445,000 square metres, featuring 1,680 hotel beds and 140 tourist villas on a site exceeding one million square metres.
The initiative has been labelled by Podemos Adeje as a “speculative assault,” particularly since the proposed golf course would utilise an amount of water equivalent to the daily needs of 16,400 individuals during a time of severe water crisis. A municipal technician also warned last year that the area faced a shortfall of 2.87 million litres of water each day.
“Nonetheless, Fraga [the mayor of Adeje, from the PSOE] is paving the way for a vast tourist complex that will consume the same amount of water daily as a third of the municipality’s population. Fraga urges residents to practice responsible consumption while simultaneously opening the taps without restrictions to the tourism lobby,” Podemos lamented in a statement.
The party has emphasised that it identified “serious technical deficiencies” in the project from the start. They argue that it proposes a bed count exceeding what is permissible under the island’s management plans, shortcomings in heritage protection, and negligence regarding mobility policies.
“We are discussing an urban initiative that may potentially breach the highest planning authority on the island, namely Tenerife’s insular plan,” continued Gabriel González, council member of Podemos Adeje. “There are indications that urban irregularities may arise, and we have communicated this to the governing team, which has chosen to ignore our concerns.”
González has condemned what he perceives as “the final act of the governance of destruction, the bungling and the shenanigans” of Fraga, the mayor who has championed the controversial tourism project, also in Adeje.
“We are witnessing a governance model that plans and executes the devastation of the municipality, incites speculation, and makes life unbearable for its residents. It is imperative that the citizenry mobilises firmly against yet another scandal that underscores the complete disconnect between the governing group and the families who endure the impacts of a management that serves only the speculators,” he concluded.
Meanwhile, the Ben-Magec collective Ecologists in Action has denounced the project, highlighting the water consumption of golf courses in the Canary Islands: they detail that there are a total of 24, with nine located solely on the island of Tenerife, and each consumes an average of 2.1 million litres of water per day, contrasted with the 128 litres per day consumed by an individual, as explained by the ecological organisation.
“An utterly unsustainable extravagance that exploits a scarce and vital resource for the population solely for profit,” he stressed.
