Compiled with the help of artificial intelligence, based on Spanish-language information. Source below the article.
Transparency watchdog orders Guía de Isora to come clean on Playa San Juan
The Canary Islands Transparency Commissioner has ordered Guía de Isora council to hand over information about the luxury tourist developments being planned in the area known as Playa San Juan. The body has upheld a complaint from the Tenerife Association of Friends of Nature (ATAN), which requested the file on 25 February and had received no response to date.
In a resolution issued on 25 September, the Commissioner gives the council 15 days to deliver the documentation or, should it not exist, to “report on that non-existence”.
What ATAN asked for
ATAN had asked Guía de Isora for a copy of the licences granted on the plots covered by the Costa San Juan partial plan and the complete file associated with it, along with information on the technical inspections carried out since work began and on the technical reports drawn up by the council. It also sought the environmental reports or authorisations held by the project or by the works already under way.
Faced with the lack of any reply, the environmental association turned to the Transparency Commissioner on 10 July. Twenty days later, the body required the council to send a complete and properly ordered copy of the file within two weeks, but again there was no response. For this reason, the Commissioner has upheld ATAN’s complaint and has once again required the council to hand over the documentation within 15 working days.
It has also asked the municipal corporation to send Transparency a copy of the information supplied to ATAN, so that it can verify compliance with the resolution. In addition, the resolution, seen by this newspaper, reminds the council that failing to meet this obligation and ignoring the Commissioner’s requests constitute serious or very serious infringements under article 68 of the Transparency and Public Information Access Act (LTAIP).
ATAN denounces a pattern of administrative silence
The environmental association denounces Guía de Isora council’s opacity and insists this is not an isolated case. “Administrative silence has become a recurring strategy in Canary Islands councils when they are asked for planning information,” it maintains. “Time is allowed to pass, citizens are forced to lodge complaints and access to information is delayed while the works advance. When the documentation arrives, if it arrives at all, it is often no longer any use in preventing the damage,” it adds in a statement.
Along these lines, ATAN warns that when an administration hides a file, it prevents society from scrutinising how the territory — “which belongs to everyone” — is managed. “Denying that right demonstrates the mafia-like attitude of the Canary Islands institutions,” it criticises.
Hotels, luxury villas and a shopping centre along more than a kilometre of coast
Regarding the Playa San Juan works, ATAN reports that they are being promoted by the Los Menceyes group, owned by the influential Belgian Weytjens family, and that they will occupy more than a kilometre of coastline with several hotels, luxury villas and a shopping centre. The Weytjens family also has on the table a project to urbanise the Guaza mountain, which has been declared a natural monument.
In its press release, ATAN recalls that the Weytjens family was “also singled out in the ruling in the Arona case”. “The ruling records as a proven fact that Los Menceyes Tenerife Sur S.L. obtained a licence in 2005 for a building in Palm-Mar despite an unfavourable report from the municipal legal services. The same ruling describes how another company represented by Stanley Weytjens, Palm Mar Sur Invest SL, obtained a licence for 30 homes in a single day in 2003,” it details.
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