The Governing Board of the Santa Cruz City Council approved this Monday two accessibility projects in Las Teresitas, one for solarium spaces and walks on the sand, and another to act in the parking area and access ramps to the beach, whose total investment amounts to 285,104.30 euros for both actions, which the mayor, José Manuel Bermúdez describes as “one more step on the road that aspires to make the capital’s beach a benchmark for people with reduced mobility and disability in Tenerife”.
The mayor maintains that “currently it is the beach that receives the most users of these characteristics from the metropolitan area, due to the tranquility of its water and the provision of bathroom assistance services” and adds that “some characteristics who join the different activities organized by the municipalities for the elderly during the summer, even receiving, in addition to the chicharreros, residents of the municipalities of La Laguna and El Rosario.
For his part, the Councilor for Accessibility, Javier Rivero, recalls that “in the past mandate, in 2018, the drafting of these two projects began, which will now be tendered in parallel with funds from the Anaga DUSI project” and argues that “the objective of the current government group is to finish promoting them, since they had been pending the latest sectoral reports and that after a complex process, the administrative part is finished today”, and reports that “the accesses of the 2 to 10 and there will be parking spaces for people with reduced mobility appropriate to current regulations.
“In February 2019 – Rivero points out – a favorable report was received from the Vice-Ministry of Territorial Policy of the Government of the Canary Islands for accesses 2 to 5, indicating that the rest are in the maritime-terrestrial domain” and maintains that “for this reason, the authorization of the rest of the accesses had to be granted by the Provincial Directorate of Coasts, and in July 2020, Coasts reports unfavorably, indicating that only works that are considered provisional and removable can be carried out, based on article 51 of the Law of Coasts”.
For this reason, and in order to find an effective solution that improves the greatest possible number of accesses, the Councilor for Accessibility reports that “we modified the initial work project to execute access 2 to 5 as ordinary work and access 10 as provisional work, offering a differentiated technical solution for this point, which is the most important for people with disabilities” and adds that “the rest of the accesses, from 6 to 9, located within the maritime-terrestrial domain cannot be improved by the conditions of the aforementioned Law of Coasts”.
“We had to wait until October 2021 -continues Javier Rivero- to obtain the favorable report from the Provincial Directorate of Coasts in relation to the action at access 10” and at the end of December of last year “we received the favorable report and authorization by the Deputy Minister of Territorial Policy of the Government of the Canary Islands, granting a period of 2 years of validity.
Therefore, once the two approved projects currently available to the City Council have been carried out, Las Teresitas beach will have a fully adapted area in terms of accessibility, which will be between entrances 1 and 5, from the parking up to the sand area, and then at access 10, which will become the reference point for people with reduced mobility, for the scheduled activities of the town councils or bathroom assistance.
