PROTESTS CONTINUE AGAINST 'CORRUPT' PLANNING LAW

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Saturday January 30 2010

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SOME 13,000 Santa Cruz residents joined the latest mass protest against the council's Plan General de Ordenación.

by JAMES TWEEDIE

The second march to the regional capital's town hall in three weeks showed that anger over the by-law had not diminished.

Between 10,000 and 15,000 people joined a similar demonstration on January 9.

The PGO is ostensibly intended to regulate the city's population density by limiting the height of buildings.

But in November last year residents were horrified to discover some 30,000 properties – many blocks of flats with multiple owners – were declared outside of the new planning regulations.

Angry home-owners argue that this out-of-planning status greatly reduces the sale and inheritance value of their property.

The protest was organised by a number of neighbourhood platforms and the Assembly for Tenerife coalition of political parties and campaigns.

They accuse the architects of the plan of corruption, alleging that Canarian Coalition (CC) mayor Miguel Zerolo, along with leading councillors from the conservative People's Party (PP) and the Canarian Nationalist Centre (CCN) of supporting the PGO in the interests of property speculators amongst their friends and relatives.

The Socialist Party (PSOE) has belatedly opposed the plan – seven years in the making – and has petitioned the regional government's ministry of planning and the environment to veto the measure.

The PP has attempted to distance itself from responsibility for the plan.

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