Chicharreros angered as council revives PGO

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Tuesday December 21 2010

ANGRY Chicharreros protested noisily outside Santa Cruz town hall on Tuesday as the council tried to resurrect its unpopular PGO planning by-law.

by JAMES TWEEDIE

About one hundred residents of Tenerife's capital staged a noisy demonstration outside the town hall as councillors debated amendments to the latest Plan General de Ordenación.

From nine in the morning to the early afternoon, the protesters blew whistles and horns and chanted slogans through loudspeakers to make themselves heard across a police cordon to inside the council chamber.

The PGO sparked outrage when it was first introduced one year ago, leading to marches of more than 10,000 people through the narrow streets of the small regional capital.

Mayor Miguel Zerolo and Councillor for Urbanism Luz Reverón insist that the by-law was designed to regulate the height and density of buildings.

But residents were outraged to discover late last year that almost half of the city's apartment buildings had been designated as fuera de ordenación or out of planning permission.

The new PGO dictated that these buildings – homes to some 100,000 of the capital's 220,000 inhabitants – were one or two stories too tall.

Platform Against the PGO spokesman José Antonio Ramos explained that this meant residents could not renew the mortgages on their homes, possibly forcing them to sell out to property speculators at well below market price.

Tens of thousands of home owners could thus be transformed into renting tenants, he warned.

Mr Ramos said that the amendments being discussed were irrelevant as long as homes remained fuera de ordenación.

He predicted that the council's ruling coalition of the nationalist Canarian Coalition (CC) conservative Peoples' Party (PP) could suffer in next year's elections.

A second demonstration is planned for Thursday January 20, when the council is due to vote on the amended by-law.

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