The PSOE group in the Puerto de la Cruz Town Hall criticises, in statements to Canarias Ahora, that it is about to be a year since the motion of no confidence that removed them from local power last August “and those who came to fix everything –referring to the PP, CC and ACP pact– have spent almost a year without making any progress in the rehabilitation of the Plaza de Europa”. As the former mayor and socialist spokesperson, Marco González, emphasises, “this is even more serious considering that they announced in October 2024 that they would accelerate the procedures through Sagulpa, a public company of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Town Hall, with a ridiculous result: almost a year later and nothing is known at all”.
González particularly draws attention to the “deafening silence of the head of the Urban Planning department, David Hernández (ACP), and the mayor, Leopoldo Afonso (PP), in these months regarding the present and future of the Plaza de Europa”. For this reason, the PSOE has requested the calling of an extraordinary plenary session to be held this Wednesday to demand explanations and, “therefore, to demand political responsibility from those who continue to remain silent about one of the key infrastructures for the city’s mobility. We are going to force them to talk about their incompetence at the helm of the Urban Planning department, a neglect that threatens to collapse the city”. The socialist spokesperson reminds that the current government “rushed to declare an urgent order to Sagulpa as its own means, justifying it as a way to speed up a process, but achieving the exact opposite, as it has been bogged down for almost a year”.
According to González, “it is disastrous to have a councillor who, since March 2024, has been incapable of securing a minor contract of just 15,000 euros to update the project prices, but we consider it even more disastrous that the mayor has been silent for nearly eleven months, thus disgracefully shielding his favourite councillor, severely harming the citizens of Puerto de la Cruz and our visitors”. In his view, it becomes “absolutely inexplicable that, with the budget that has been handled by the Urban Planning councillor in recent years, he has still not been able to secure a minor contract for just that amount. Only this explains why the execution of the budget in his area is exceptionally low again in 2025, demonstrating that it was merely bad theatre when he complained about a lack of funds: it is clear that the problem is his inability to manage it”.
The PSOE reveals that, “in light of the silence of the mayor and the responsible councillor, the town hall turned to the Cabildo of Tenerife last May, thus admitting its incompetence to process a simple minor contract to update the project prices, a vital step to be able to tender the works. Puerto de la Cruz –emphasises González– neither deserves nor can justify its town council neglecting its functions and resorting almost a year later to the island administration to rescue it with a minor contract that the local corporation should have processed”. In his opinion, “this decision clearly shows that the Town Hall is neither present nor expected, only concerned with launching misleading headlines that actually obey a mere marketing campaign that only serves to confuse the citizens of Puerto”.
The former local leader particularly criticises David Hernández for being “the same Urban Planning councillor who boasted about reclaiming competencies for that area now accepting a secondary role so that Leopoldo López’s brother –referring to the deputy of the Cabildo and former mayor of Puerto, Lope Afonso– does the work that he is supposed to do and for which he is paid religiously each month as Urban Planning councillor”.
