el medano residents council protest

El Médano residents revolt against council failures

Compiled with the help of artificial intelligence, based on Spanish-language information. Source below the article.

El Médano residents take a stand against council “incapacity”

Residents of El Médano, a coastal village in the south of Tenerife, have decided to speak out publicly to denounce what they regard as municipal governance defined by absolute incapacity, a lack of planning and systematic contempt for local people. In a joint letter sent to the media by the neighbourhood organisations Consejo de Barrio and the Plataforma Vecinal, they explain that over recent years this district of the Granadilla de Abona municipality, governed by the Canarian Coalition, the Partido Popular and Vox, has steadily accumulated grievances which, far from being resolved, have multiplied without the council’s governing team offering any real answers or solutions.

As if the lack of solutions were not enough, they complain that the municipal government has sought to prohibit residents from using public spaces to meet, debate and propose solutions.

Sewage on the beaches, unfinished works and a useless bike lane

Among the issues they cite as grounds for protest are the bike lane, unfinished works, sewage discharges onto the beaches, insecurity and the lack of local police, overcrowding and overtourism, and nuisance light pollution.

The bike lane in El Médano was installed, according to these residents, without a mobility study or adequate planning of urban space, and without taking into account the village’s mobility needs and problems. In their view, the result is a useless piece of infrastructure that has created more problems than solutions, and which has served only to squander the public budget earmarked for sustainable mobility.

As for unfinished works, they note that the neighbourhood has long coexisted with projects that are stalled, half-completed or even poorly executed. The impression, they explain, is that works are planned in order to spend public money rather than to address the village’s needs. A village that does not even have a decent cultural centre or library, yet spends hundreds of thousands of euros pedestrianising a promenade that was already pedestrian, as in the case of the Paseo Atlántico, where the work has produced a worse result than before, they argue.

They also highlight the regular discharges of sewage onto the district’s beaches. According to these residents, both the island council and the town hall have already given various dates for the wastewater treatment plant to come into operation, but the years pass, the beaches remain contaminated and solutions never arrive. In fact, this very Wednesday the main beach was closed following a new sewage discharge. Residents recall that a sewage outflow discharging directly onto the beach sand was recently discovered and that, according to activists who reported it on social media, it allegedly originates from a well-known hotel and restaurant in the village, without the council having commented on this serious case of pollution, which also poses a risk to public health.

Twenty years with the same number of police officers

Regarding insecurity and the lack of policing, the neighbourhood organisations maintain that the municipality has had the same number of police officers for 20 years, while its population and tourist activity have multiplied. “There are whole nights when there is not a single officer on duty or answering emergency calls,” they say. Neighbourhood complaints about the lack of police attention are piling up while officers have stopped working overtime in protest at the failure to update their collective agreement, which has been obsolete for years.

Thousands of tourist beds and rents reaching €1,000

As in other parts of Tenerife, overcrowding and overtourism are also a problem. El Médano residents note that the district has thousands of tourist beds, most of them holiday rentals and many of them illegal. This, they say, has driven up housing costs to the point where an average rent reaches €1,000. Yet, they add, no action of any kind is known to have been taken to inspect holiday rental activity and, following the recent law regulating this activity, illegal operators have adapted their offering by hiding behind seasonal rentals, without the council lifting a finger to control it.

The Plataforma Vecinal Barquera, which promoted the pioneering municipal bylaw regulating holiday rental activity, has submitted several proposals to control this activity without receiving any response from the council.

Nuisance lighting and a ban on neighbourhood meetings

To these problems can be added the recent installation of illuminated signage at pedestrian crossings, which numerous residents describe as excessive, disruptive to rest and clearly contrary to the light pollution criteria that a natural coastal location such as El Médano should respect. Another decision taken without informing or consulting those of us who live here. Residents point out that it is curious that these signs have also been installed at pedestrian crossings where, in their view, there is no road safety problem, but not at unsafe points on the entrance to the village where a greater warning might actually be needed.

Beyond a small detail, this case clearly reflects the municipal corporation’s absolute disconnect from, and incapacity towards, the people of the village, people who have fought against excessive lighting and pollution and in defence of the natural environment on other occasions, they stress.

But the most serious issue, according to these residents, and the one that has exhausted the village’s patience, has been the municipal government’s attempt to prevent the neighbourhood meetings preparing the Consejo de Barrio from being held in the public building that had been earmarked precisely for that purpose and for which permission had been obtained. Residents explain that the councillor for citizen participation, from Vox, tried to expel us from the very space that the administration placed at the service of citizen participation at the beginning of the year. Faced with the ban, residents have decided to continue occupying a space that is public.

“Instead of taking advantage of the fact that there is a group of people willing to collaborate, propose and work to improve the village, they try to demoralise us and prevent us from meeting. This episode is not an isolated incident, but confirmation of a way of governing that sees neighbourhood participation as an obstacle rather than a useful democratic tool for making appropriate decisions, and its result is there for all to see in the decisions this municipal government is taking,” they criticise.

Residents conclude by insisting that El Médano will not stay silent, as they will continue organising and demanding the transparency and participation that, as residents, is our right.

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