The Canarian Agency for the Protection of the Natural Environment initiates a sanctioning file against the promoter of the Cuna del Alma tourist project, Segunda Casa Adeje SL, because the work carried out in El Puertito de Adeje lacks the mandatory environmental impact report. As it is an offense classified as “serious”, it raises a fine of 110,000 euros. Amount that the company can reduce to 66,000 euros if it acknowledges its responsibility and makes the voluntary payment.
The resolution of this department of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, Fight against Climate Change and Territorial Planning orders the suspension of the execution of the Cuna del Alma-Sector 06 urbanization project while this file is being processed and in order to avoid the affectation of the viborina triste protected plant, whose presence has kept work paralyzed since the 10th, by order of the aforementioned ministry.
The project has the environmental evaluation approved by the Cotmac since 2018
The company received yesterday the communication of the disciplinary file “for damage to heritage and natural habitat, as well as for starting the urbanization project and its associated works without having the prior environmental impact statement.” Segunda Casa Adeje SL has 15 days to present the allegations. Through an official statement, the promoter assures that “she feels administratively persecuted by the Ministry of the Environment, with no possibility of defense.” At the same time, she announces that “she is finalizing the study of the current legal circumstances to go judicially against the resolutions adopted by the Ministry of the Environment of the Government of the Canary Islands».
Three resolutions in two months
This is the third file of which the work to build Cuna del Alma is the subject. On August 31, the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage of the Government of Canary Islands He proposed a sanction of 600,000 euros (the maximum for very serious infractions) for affecting the works carried out on engravings and destroying archaeological remains. On the 10th, the same council paralyzed the works, in a precautionary manner, due to the presence of specimens of the sad viper plant (Echium triste) –It occupies 8,605 square meters, 2% of the 437,000 covered by the tourism project, so the works pose an “imminent threat of environmental damage to protected wild flora.”
Segunda Casa Adeje, SL is “surprised by the speed of the Department of Ecological Transition of the Government of the Canary Islands to communicate a third resolution to the project in just a few weeks.” Surprise that links to the fact that “the promoter is waiting to receive a response to a request for a report submitted in February (nine months ago), for which no response has been received from this Administration, despite the insistence and crucial importance of its resolution.
The promoter considers that “this type of action” by the council managed by José Antonio Valbuena, “repeated in a short space of time and in such a disproportionate way, reflect an interest in stopping the project that goes beyond the legal protection itself.” In its official statement yesterday afternoon, and with the support of its legal counsel, the company states that “this act carried out by the Canarian Agency for the Protection of the Natural Environment is inadmissible, because this entity does not have the powers to carry it out.” .
Segunda Casa Adeje, SL maintains that, after the precautionary stoppage resolved on the 10th (communicated to the company on the 11th) “due to an environmental responsibility procedure, the promoter required access to the file and the Ministry has not provided it, denying it the right to his defense.”
It should be remembered that the Insular Directorate for Territorial Planning and Historical Heritage of the Cabildo de Tenerife issued a resolution on May 31 through which it suspended, also in a precautionary manner, the work being carried out on a plot located in the vicinity of a protected reserve. Suspension that became firm on June 28.
Environmental evaluation
The Canary Islands Territorial and Environmental Planning Commission (Cotmac) approved, on March 6, 2018, “definitively and conditionally”, the environmental report of the document called Partial Review of the Adeje General Planning Plan in the field of Sector S06 Puertito de Adeje. Barely seven months later, on October 18 of that year, this body dependent on the Ministry of Politics Territorial granted its full consent. It is a 192-page document that includes an annex corresponding to the report of the Cabildo de Tenerife.
The existence of this document is cause for discrepancies. The Minister of Ecological Transition, José Antonio Valbuena, has maintained until now that both the Environmental Impact Law and the old Land Law require the preparation of a simplified environmental impact study to undertake holiday developments outside urbanized land. Valbuena understands that Cuna del Alma is one of them.
The company perceives “an interest in stopping the project that goes beyond its own legal protection”
Manuel Luis Méndez, Councilor for Ecological Transition, Land Management, Development and Employment of the Adeje City Council, maintains that the work being carried out does not require an environmental impact study. These works, he explains, are part of the urbanization project, not the proposed villas and hotel. In fact, the paralyzed work is a structuring way, essential for future communication on the coast of the municipality.
The first stone of the Cuna del Alma project, in El Puertito de Adeje, was laid on May 5. With a planned investment of 350 million euros, the promoters want to build a unique complex of 420 accommodation units, 1,800 beds and the forecast of generating 750 jobs. The work occupies 136,000 square meters of 437,000 land classified as developable since 1982.
