tenerife infrastructure projects delayed bureaucracy unacceptable

Tenerife’s £4.5bn Infrastructure Paralysis Deemed “Unacceptable”

Business and council leaders blast “unacceptable” paralysis

The blockage of over €4.5 billion in investment for major works projected, planned, and (in some cases) initiated for the island decades ago is “unacceptable” for business and municipal representatives from the north and south. “In Tenerife, there is a clear lack of political determination to move projects out of the bureaucratic mud, a determination we do see on other islands,” states the president of the Círculo de Empresarios del Sur (CEST), Javier Cabrera.

“What is not on, what is humanly and politically unacceptable, is that we take decades to plan, project, develop, and execute anything on this Island,” adds Carmen Luz Baso, the mayor of Los Silos. In her view, “in the Canaries, we have woven a legislative and bureaucratic web whose main victim is the citizenry.” Bureaucracy is the term those consulted point to as one of the fundamental causes for the lack of real progress in investment for the island’s major projects.

A tangled web stifling progress

Finding a solution “is very complicated because of the bureaucratic tangle that currently exists in the Canaries,” says Vicente Dorta, president of the Alisios Norte association, which brings together professionals, businesses, and community groups. The reading of the paralysis affecting almost all of Tenerife’s projects differs little between the northern and southern regions: “It is evident that there is a problem with execution capacity and, above all, an absolute lack of planning on the island of Tenerife.”

The mayor of Adeje, José Miguel Rodríguez Fraga, cites “the best example” of this as “mobility in the south, where the motorway was built to handle 25,000 cars and it now carries almost 100,000.” The constant chaos on this road confirms that “there is no overall strategic plan for the Island that seeks solutions to major problems like mobility or healthcare.”

Failed planning meets population growth

Vicente Dorta highlights that the north is a region with almost 250,000 inhabitants, underdeveloped infrastructure, and poor connectivity that has seen little work in recent years. The president of CEST, Javier Cabrera, introduces another element into the debate: demographics. “Faced with the failure to execute the infrastructure we have been demanding for decades, they try to blame population growth.”

However, demographic growth “has been forecast for over 25 years in the PIOT [Territorial Planning Guidelines], along with the infrastructure. We have grown according to what was planned, but the Administration has not done its part.” Another example: “It is not possible that the project to widen the TF-1 motorway, which was definitively approved in November, has still not been put out to tender. The administration in this case has taken over four months to prepare a tender and we don’t know how much longer it will take.”

The consequence of “a tangle of regulations and the existing bureaucracy is that projects drag on indefinitely,” concludes the president of Alisios Norte.

The lengthy list of stalled projects

The link dock at the port of Santa Cruz, the new refinery city, the Ofra-El Chorrillo road, the TF-5 ring road around La Laguna, the tram link to Tenerife North Airport, the Mesa Mota tunnel, the Northern and Southern train lines, the dock and maritime park for Puerto de la Cruz, the improvement of the port of Los Cristianos, the Motor Circuit, the new terminal at Tenerife South Airport, and the completion of the port of Granadilla are some of the projects bogged down or with minimal progress in the last five years.

To these are added others where some progress is being made, such as the Padre Anchieta pedestrian footbridge, the third lane on the TF-5, the third lane on the TF-1, and the closure of the Insular Ring Road to the West, plus the Teno Meteorological Radar, now finished, or the port of Fonsalía, which has been scrapped. But the list is broader and includes the burying of the Southern motorway through Adeje, a project which is now paralysed.

The mayor of Los Silos, Carmen Luz Baso, delivers the final verdict: “As things stand, bureaucracy is one of the great handicaps of this land for making progress, and the most frustrating thing is that every time someone from on high announces a simplification law, the result in practice is, unequivocally, exactly the opposite of what was expected.”

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