The construction of 420 luxury villas in Puertito de Adeje is progressing rapidly, after the Canarian Government lifted the suspension orders due to the destruction of archaeological sites and its impact on protected flora. However, a new legal front has emerged against the developers of the large tourist project Cuna del Alma. This time, environmental groups have reported that the company is carrying out unauthorised works on several plots included in the protection servitude of the public maritime soil.
The environmental association Salvar La Tejita highlights that since May 2025, land clearing, earth movement, and slope dismantling have been taking place with heavy machinery within the coastal protection servitude. “There are projections of aggressive infrastructures along the coast, which include a nightclub,” warn the environmentalists.
The affected plots are CO-4 (commercial-leisure), RD-1 and RD-2 (recreational-sport), and T1 and T2 (tourist). The Adeje Town Council approved the urban planning licence for the latter plot in September 2024, where a pool area, a buggy parking, a solarium, a bar, a restaurant, and toilets, among other services, are planned to be built. Salvar La Tejita has challenged this licence in court, as the same document in which it was approved states that until that date the company had not provided the necessary prior authorisation that must be issued by the Canarian Government to construct in the servitude area.
The Adeje Town Council, led for more than three decades by socialist José Miguel Rodríguez Fraga, relies on a supposed positive administrative silence. According to the developer’s version, included in a document published on 16 September last year and consulted by Canarias Ahora, the authorisation was requested in February 2022 from the Vice-Ministry of Territorial Planning and Water of the regional Government.
This required the company Segunda Casa Adeje S.L. to provide additional documentation in April. The entity submitted these documents in June and November, and according to the developer, the regional Government did not issue any resolution within the maximum six-month period stipulated by regional regulations. “Therefore, the request for an authorisation report for the T2 building in Puertito de Adeje in the servitude area has been deemed to have received positive silence,” justifies Adeje.
The Town Council clings to Decree 171/2006, which regulated the procedure for processing authorisations in the protection servitude area. This regulation stated that, once six months have passed, if no resolution has been notified, the authorisation is understood to be deemed approved due to positive silence. However, sources familiar with the process indicate that this regulation contravened state legislation, and thus it was amended by Decree 45/2024 of 25 March, six months before the municipal corporation granted the licence to Cuna del Alma to build on plot T2.
The current decree corrects the previous one to comply with Law 39/2015 on the Common Administrative Procedure of Public Administrations. As such, the new regional regulations make it clear that silence “will have a negative effect” in those procedures which, if deemed favourable, “involve the exercise of activities that may harm the environment”.
Regarding plots RD-1, RD-2, and CO-1, which are also within the coastal servitude area, the Adeje Town Council noted in September 2024 that until that point, “they have not provided the prior documentation from the Canarian Government”. “Only plot CO-1 has applied for a construction licence dated 30/09/2022, this aspect must be analysed by the legal services,” states the corporation’s document.
This newspaper has asked the Adeje Town Council whether the developer has submitted the regional Government’s authorisation since September, but the municipal corporation has not responded as of now. The developer has also not answered inquiries from this editorial team.
The General Directorate of Coasts and Maritime Space Management of the Canarian Government has responded that “favourable reports have only been issued for some actions in the area”. “This procedure is under judicial scrutiny, and the General Directorate, as it must, is collaborating with the judiciary regarding the submission of documentation. If some actions are being carried out without permission, we have no knowledge of it,” they added.
Salvar La Tejita has also reported the works to the Canarian Agency for the Protection of the Natural Environment and has demanded an immediate inspection of the works and their precautionary suspension. Meanwhile, the groups that have filed a criminal complaint against the Mayor of Adeje and the promoters plan to include all documentation related to the plots affected by the protection servitude in this complaint.
These citizen groups, which also include those affected by the project, demanded this week that the Cabildo de Tenerife suspend the works due to “numerous serious irregularities”. The Tagoror Permanente de El Puertito de Adeje collective, formed to inform about the “destructive advance of the macro project’s works”, has prepared a report which not only points out the alleged illegality in the development of works on plot T2. The collective accuses the company of failing to report the discovery of new archaeological sites and of conducting earth movement without the oversight of an archaeologist.
