The members of the Firefighters Consortium assigned to the La Orotava park suffocated the day before yesterday fire that affected the ground floor of the Iders building, inhabited by almost twenty squatters in the 84 homes and premises that make it up. The fire, the third in the last two years, burned a significant part of the large amount of garbage stored in a building on which Public health certified its unhealthy status on July 5. Yesterday, the situation had not changed and the main access door remained wide open and several people entered and left the place.
The municipal government of Puerto de la Cruz ensures that “the administrative process is developed, with a request to the court in between” –and the requirement to the owners–, so that the City Council can undertake the cleaning of private property in a subsidiary way. “The terms are always lengthened, but that is the law and the procedure,” the government group adds.
The local government asks the court to authorize entry to act in a subsidiary manner
It also informs that The Social area “continues to intervene, together with Cáritas and with the support of the Cabildo, to encourage the people who squat in that building to find a housing solution by rebuilding their lives”. The local government maintains that “action is taken on several fronts, but not always so much the legal reality as the reality of the people makes things easier.”
Juan Carlos Marrero, Councilor for Urbanism with CC during the previous term, reproaches the mayor, Marco González, and the mayor of Urbanism – whom he says is “lost and hidden” – David Hernández, that “when they were in the opposition they said They solved that in three months, but they have been 30 and now they ask for calm and allege that the administrative times are different. It states that the Land Law made public intervention possible, which was conditioned until the City Council was no longer subject to a Financing Plan. In 2019 there were 100,000 euros budgeted for urban infractions like this one, explains the exedil.
The environment does not explain the delay in intervening after several fires during the last two years
30 years ago
The nightmare of the Iders building, located in the middle of Avenida Familia Betancourt y Molina, it began in October 1991, when former mayor Félix Real (RIP) issued the order to evict the ground floors of the building due to an alleged generalized aluminosis that, years later, was shown to affect only less than 10% of the building, with no serious structural damage. The General Directorate of Housing of the Government of the Canary Islands declared the property uninhabitable in January 1992 and the Portuense City Council ordered their eviction in February 1992. The owners of the apartments and commercial premises began a judicial and administrative battle that has lasted almost 30 years.
In December 2020, the Plenary of Portuense approved an institutional motion, which was finalized in February 2021, to provide a comprehensive solution to the social and public health problem in a building marked by fires, fights, rats, cockroaches, mosquitoes, a lot of garbage and drug use.
