The Administrative Contentious Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) has annulled, with retroactive effects, the new Ordinance of Mobility and Road Safety of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which was ratified on January 17, 2024, and came into effect on February 9 of that year. The court deemed it non-compliant with the law. The verdict, which has been made available for public viewing, rules against the Costa City Council, supporting the complaint lodged by the Association of Neighbourhoods Urban Centro El Perenquén on March 18 of the previous year, represented by lawyer Felipe Campos.
The Councillor for Mobility, Evelyn Alonso, announced yesterday her intention to file an appeal before the Supreme Court (TS) regarding the judgement issued by the TSJC that nullifies the aforementioned ordinance. As per this ruling, the Chamber regards the analysis memory, which forms part of the regulations approved by the Municipal Plenary in December 2023, as inadequate—a viewpoint that the Consistory disputes.
In this context, Alonso clarified that, “while the legal proceedings are ongoing, with our appeal being submitted to the Supreme Court, the current ordinance, ratified in the plenary session, will remain in effect until the higher court makes a determination.” Furthermore, she emphasised, “it should be made clear that the ordinance included the document of the Normative Impact Analysis Report, which the Chamber has deemed insufficient.”
The judgement accepts the appeal from El Perenquén, which contested this regulation that aimed to regulate personal mobility vehicles such as scooters; the controlled parking through the introduction of green and blue zones; the low emission zone (ZBE) and various other implications of the ordinance pertaining to traffic and road safety.
‘Ex tunc’ ruling, as if the norm never existed
In this respect, the TSJC emphasizes that the contested ordinance is entirely void and, “therefore, our ruling has ex tunc effects, meaning it must be regarded for all intents and purposes as if it had never existed; it has never been valid, let alone effective, as it has failed to enter into legal existence, merely presenting an illusion of legality that is now definitively nullified by this ruling. The contested regulation is not an act but rather a general provision, and thus every defect in legality results in absolute nullity.”
The court further states that the cause for absolute nullity, impacting the entire ordinance, “is the lack of a normative impact analysis, as we cannot accept the existing administrative file as such, merely in name. In reality, none of its 38 pages is allocated to a thorough examination of the ordinance’s text, item by item. The terms outlined suggest that the same report could address the mobility issues that would be addressed.”
The TSJC specifies that “a normative alternative must be imposed to articulate rights and obligations and adjust its content to a higher norm, as it fails to indicate what these non-normative alternatives consist of, and furthermore, it does not assess the so-called zero alternative, which is the decision to undertake no action at all,” he stresses.
