The Ministry of Ecological Transition, Fight against Climate Change and Territorial Planning of the Government of the Canary Islands, headed by the socialist José Antonio Valbuena, has guaranteed the Canary Islands Platform for People Affected by the Coastal Law (PCALC) their presence in the Commission that must develop the Transfers in the Coasts of the State to the Archipelago. Once the competence framework, which includes the same powers that Catalonia and Andalusia already have, has been resolved, at the end of January or the beginning of February it is expected that the agreement for the transfer will be signed.
From the signing of this agreement between administrations, the work of the Commission in which the Platform will be integrated together with the Canary Islands federations (Fecai) and municipalities (Fecam). The idea is that it be an operational body that enters into the detailed analysis of each nucleus of the coastline of the Islands, establishes regulations on them and resolves their relationship with what determines the Coastal Act of 1988. Valbuena has made a commitment to the president of the PCALC, the lawyer José Luis Langa, to make this integration effective, which involves reactivating the Cooperation Protocol signed by the Government of the Canary Islands and the Platform in April 2016.
Canarias, as this newspaper announced on December 18, starts with the premise of equalizing the broad competencies in the matter of communities such as Catalonia or Andalusia. Thus it was determined in a recent technical meeting between the Autonomous Community and the State, through the General Directorate of Coasts, which solved the pending fringes after a long negotiation. Among other issues, the Islands will have sanctioning capacity and participation in the planning of the coastline. The state originally intended to reserve both powers, although it has accepted their transfer with the development of the Article 157 of the Statute of Autonomy. The chapter on human, material and financial resources remains to be closed in the transfer.
Key meeting
Valbuena and Langa held a meeting a few days ago in the presence of Leopoldo Díaz, Deputy Minister of Territorial Planning and Ecological Transition, to ratify and reactivate the aforementioned 2016 protocol. This document, signed by Díaz and Langa, in addition to the then Regional Policy Councilor Territorial Nieves Lady Barreto (Canary Coalition), advocated the constitution of a Mixed Commission with representatives of the Cabildos and affected municipalities. It could not be started when it was practically completed in March 2020, coinciding with the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Protocol also lays the foundations that must govern so that the uniqueness of the territory in the Islands is recognized for its special landscape, ethnographic, geological and architectural configuration. In this sense, the initiative, now reactivated, sought to promote cooperation on the path of finding formulas that would influence achieving the regularization of the largest number of buildings affected by the current Coastal Law, as well as the need to collect the maximum of information possible on those island cores in order to be able to be used in their defense work.
In this context, Nieves Lady Barreto already made it clear then that “coastal towns are an element of the culture, landscape and history of the Canary Islands.” He also highlighted that “there are data on them from the beginning of the 20th century and even from earlier times.” José Luis Langa, for his part, has always repeatedly requested the creation of this common front “to defend a people who have lived by and by the sea since time immemorial ”. He has insisted for more than two decades that “the Canary Islands is, without a doubt, the national territory most affected by the 1988 Coastal Law”.
Hundreds of families
Hundreds of Canarian families, from all the Islands, is it so threatened due to the retroactive application of the Law. The Platform understands that “it is possible to be late to save the homes, businesses and the way of life of citizens who have lived in these towns long before the application of the law in 1988”. Both parties stated in the agreement the need to join efforts to ensure that the Canary Islands have the same powers in Coasts as other autonomous communities con the purpose of achieving a comprehensive management of the coastline, without gaps between urban and environmental planning with the sectoral regulations of the Coastal legislation. The Platform understands “fundamental” the transfer of powers from the State to the Autonomous Community because, in the words of Langa, “we are a unique territory with unique characteristics that we must know how to explain to political leaders in Madrid”.
More than twenty years
The Platform carries more than twenty years of struggle in defense of the interests of those affected by the Coastal Law. The process has been long with recurring notifications of demolition from the state entity that reappear in a timely manner as a threat to those affected. From El Cho Vito or Bajo La Cuesta, in Candelaria, at Puntalarga and El Faro in Fuencaliente de La Palma with stops in Santa Lucia and Las Bajas, both nuclei in Güímar, Igueste de San Andrés (Santa Cruz) or Valle Gran Rey (La Gomera). But apart from these conflicts in which the legal team led by José Luis Langa has intervened directly and is still intervening today, the Platform has ensured the defense of approximately 150,000 people residing in different points of the coast in 66 of the 88 municipalities of the Archipelago. There we must include other struggles such as those of the neighbors of Ojos de Garza, in Telde, Gran Canaria or Playa Blanca in Lanzarote. Langa has summed it up like this: “We are talking about the survival of an entire people, the defense of its idiosyncrasy and its culture, since everything that can be lost in the Canary Islands not only affects those involved but also all citizens of the islands”.
