Cabildo Awaits Study of Calatrava’s Plan Before Starting Repairs
The Cabildo of Tenerife stated on Friday that it will begin repair works on the Adán Martín Auditorium once it has studied the project submitted by architect Santiago Calatrava. The island corporation confirmed it received the document on 6 February and will take necessary precautionary measures to prevent damage to third parties. However, it gave no concrete date for the start of the works, despite the defects—first detected in 2017—having worsened due to recent rainfall.
A History of Delays and a €24 Million Dispute
The core dispute is that the architect does not want to bear the estimated €24 million cost of repairing the defects. The Cabildo’s statement, released on Friday, also fails to clarify this crucial point: who will pay for the works, the people of Tenerife or the architect. It is worth noting that the total construction cost of the Auditorium ended up being three times higher than initially budgeted, rising from €25 million to over €75 million. The cost of the defects was calculated four years ago at approximately €24 million.
Project Received After Years of Postponement
In its statement—issued 48 hours after Canarias Ahora published new photographs showing the building’s state, with sections of the trencadís mosaic detached from the roof, leaks, and protective netting installed in some areas—the island corporation asserts that receiving the Valencian architect’s document represents a significant advance within the negotiation process of recent years. “The receipt of this project represents a significant step within a procedure that the island corporation has constantly driven with the aim of reaching an agreement that allows the necessary work to be carried out to guarantee the correct state of the property,” it adds.
It further emphasises that the Cabildo has worked intensely to find a solution between the parties to avoid prolonging the ongoing lawsuit and to address the necessary repairs as soon as possible. It recalls that the Cabildo’s technicians detected defects in small areas of the building related to the cladding, the trencadís, and moisture filtrations in 2017.
A Legal and Political Saga
After completing the corresponding administrative procedure, the Cabildo demanded that the jointly liable parties—architect Santiago Calatrava, the UTE (Temporary Union of Companies) in charge of the works (comprising Acciona Construcción, S.A. and Dragados, S.A.), and the technical directors of the project—repair the damage. Various legal appeals were filed against this decision, and in 2019 a judge urged the parties to reach an agreement to end the dispute. This led to negotiations starting in 2019 to explore a possible consensual solution, suspending the judicial process while talks lasted.
The then island government, led by the PSOE, gave the architect a 19-month deadline to present his project. However, when Rosa Dávila took over the corporation and as the deadline was about to expire, she extended it without explanation by a further 18 months, thereby postponing the rehabilitation. The Cabildo now notes that, after several modifications requested by the corporation’s technicians, the plan was finally received on 6 February, three years later.
Socialist Group Demands Clarity and Accountability
Upon learning of the Cabildo’s statement, the Socialist Group in the corporation has urged the president, Rosa Dávila, to demand that Calatrava take on the cost of the works, as the PSOE did during its previous term. It has also pointed out that the corporation has announced this same intention on numerous occasions and is doing so again after statements by spokesperson Aarón Afonso alluding to the building’s defects were published.
“It is striking that the Cabildo government avoids mentioning the agreement we adopted in the governing council in June 2022, when during the previous term Santiago Calatrava was given a 19-month deadline to present the Auditorium rehabilitation project. That deadline ended in January 2024,” Afonso stated. “That is why it is surprising that now the president of the Cabildo, Rosa Dávila, tries to present as a success the fact that this project arrives over two years late. What this situation shows is that the Cabildo’s management of this matter is not being diligent enough to resolve a problem affecting one of Tenerife’s main cultural symbols.”
“If the project has indeed been submitted, what is needed now is for the Cabildo to clarify several fundamental questions. First, when is this project definitively scheduled for approval?” continued the Socialist spokesperson, for whom “above all, the most important thing is to know when the rehabilitation works of the Tenerife Auditorium will really begin. And it is also essential to know what the cost of these works will be and who will ultimately have to assume it: the Cabildo itself or the architect responsible for the project.” The Socialist group, he added, “demands clarity and responsibility, as we did during the previous term and continue to do now, because what Tenerife needs is not announcements, but concrete solutions and clear deadlines to definitively resolve the Auditorium’s problems.”
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