Ex-pats hail extinction of ‘mammoth’ development

Socialists and conservatives unite to defeat CC plan for Las Teresitas beach

Protesters outside the town hall

SAN ANDREAS residents are celebrating victory after Santa Cruz council voted to deny permission for a controversial development on Las Teresitas beach.

by James Tweedie

The Association of Friends of Anaga, Las Teresitas and its Coast (Asociacion de Amigos de la Playa de las Teresitas, Anaga y su Litoral), which includes a number of ex-patriots, mounted a demonstration outside Santa Cruz town hall on Friday September 18 to urge opposition councillors to “keep their word” and support a Socialist Party of the Canaries (PSC) motion against the mammoth development.

Some wore long paper ‘noses’ and chanted “concejal Pinocho” – councillor Pinocchio – to express their distrust of local politicians.

A coalition of small businesses in Anaga, the Friends of the Port group and environmentalists Ben Magec – Ecologistas en Accion also supported the campaign against the scheme .

The rally was held to coincide with a council meeting where the PSC motion – supported by traditional enemies the conservative Popular Party (PP) – was due to be voted upon.

The motion sought to deny planning permission for a huge residential, commercial, hotel and parking development – dubbed “El Mamotreto” – by local company Inmobilaria San Andreas and French firm Dominique Perrault Architecture.

Between them the two opposition parties held enough seats on the council to defeat the minority Canaries Coalition (CC) administration, which supported the development.

The campaigners expected the motion to be passed by a 17-12 vote – if all the councillors who ostensibly opposed the development kept to their word.

The scheme included 1,000 flats, a shopping centre, multi-story car park between the town and the beach, and a hotel covering the entire mesa of La Bateria hill behind the beach front.

It would have dwarfed the existing communities of San Andreas and Anaga and Santa Cruz’s popular public beach.

The area is home to some 2,500 people, many of whom stood to have their property expropriated to make way for the Mamotreto.

At first it was uncertain whether the motion – item number 21 out of 23 on the agenda that day – would be voted on before the council reconvened on Monday.

But at 3:30 a council spokeswomen told the New Deal Express that the motion had been passed by 15 votes to 12.

Association of Friends President Lola Rebrow said: “We have been campaigning for some 30 months against the project of Perrault and the disfiguring of Playa de Las Teresitas, which is the beach of all Santa Cruz.

“Now we are glad to know that politicians have begun to see reason.”

Association of Friends President Lola Rebrow and husband Heinz Schneider

The vote was also the final nail in the coffin of the fractured alliance between CC mayor Miguel Zerolo and PP council group leader Ángel Llanos.

Residents had been campaigning against developments on Las Teresitas beach for over nine years. In 2000 some 10,000 people marched several miles from Las Teresitas to the centre of Santa Cruz to protest against plans to build there.

On the web: http://www.perraultarchitecte.com/

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