The municipality of Los Realejos will have the first approved funeral and crematorium service in the entire northern region of Tenerifean old demand from the residents of this area of the Island, who are forced to move to the metropolitan area (Santa Cruz or La Laguna) to be able to cremate their loved ones.
It will be built in the La Higuerita area, with private investment, and it already has a license from the City Council to start the works. In addition to a crematorium, it will have five wake rooms, a chapel, about 130 parking spaces, a cafeteria, offices and complementary units.
The confirmation was made yesterday by its mayor, Adolfo González (PP), in the regional meeting organized by Fepeco in the Liceo de Taoro, in La Orotava, in which its councilor, Francisco Linares (CC), and that of Puerto de la Cruz, Marco González (PSOE), also participated, to analyze the reality of the Valley from the perspective of each one of them, as well as to know their needs and demands.
In his first meeting with the sector, the realejero president took the opportunity to demand more socio-sanitary places, especially for the elderly. “We have an absolute drama in the Canary Islands and in the North, because there are no geriatric care centers, neither private nor public, nor planning to build them in the long, medium or short term”, he pointed out. In this sense, he announced that the General Development Plan (PGO) has land available for all those people and companies that are interested in building this type of residence “and thus contribute our grain of sand to solve this problem.”
In relation to the PGO, González confessed that it becomes “extremely complicated” to plan the territory without the document that provides the legal basis for it, whose processing has been going on since 2013. “This means that many municipalities are suffering a true ordeal to organize the municipality and put many investments into operation”, he explained.
Likewise, he hoped that this year, finally, the environmental report would be definitively approved, since it will allow significant projects to be launched, such as the expansion of the La Gañanía industrial estate. Before giving the floor to the mayor of Porto, the president of the employers’ association, Oscar Izquierdoanalyzed the situation of the Island, which, in his opinion, is made up of “three different autonomous communities”, North, South and the Metropolitan Area, which live backwards for different cultural, economic and sociological reasons.
In addition, “they are broken by a deficient road network that instead of uniting us, separates us,” he said. In this regard, he was of the opinion that Tenerife “has to work with all three” and asked the mayors for a comprehensive plan for the rehabilitation, conservation and maintenance of the heritage of the subdivisions, to take advantage of them as a means of attracting social wealth for the area, “because, currently, cultural tourism is focused on La Laguna”. A statement with which the Puerto Rican president Marco González disagreed, who highlighted festivals such as Mueca, Phe Festival and the different cultural initiatives that have been promoted from Puerto de la Cruz, which have made the Observatory of Culture recognize the municipality as the Capital of Culture of the Canary Islands. “Cultural tourism does not go to La Laguna, I think it comes to the Port and I say it with a full mouth and a swollen chest,” he declared.
In addition, he stressed the good tourist results in the municipality, “which is experiencing a new era, in which investments do not stop and where there are more works than ever.”
As examples, González referred to the future island water sports center, the expansion of the Botanical Garden, the start of the remodeling works on the Taoro hotel, the rehabilitation of other establishments such as the Martiánez or the Miramar hotel, which will go from three to four stars, the old San Telmo hotel, which will reopen shortly, the paving of many streets, and the solution found for the Iders building, to name a few examples.
Finally, Francisco Linares expressed his concern that next year the liberalization of fiscal rules will end and the money from the municipalities will again be paralyzed in the banks, when “we have shown that we have been excellent managers”, he made a defense of municipalism and advocated that the public contracts law be made more flexible.
traffic jams
To end the traffic jams on the TF-5, one of the major problems in the region, Linares proposed an “apolitical island mobility plan, in which all political parties agree because they have all co-governed together.” “Let’s be brave because what we cannot do, and in that we are all guilty, is to stamp ourselves every four years to get political gain with the messages of how to end the queues because the citizens are fed up,” he finally said.
