tenerife motor circuit court ruling

Court blow to Tenerife motor circuit project

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Fresh court setback for Tenerife motor circuit

The High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) has upheld the appeal lodged by the Tenerife Association of Friends of Nature (ATAN) against the only ruling that had gone in favour of the Tenerife Cabildo. As a result, the courts have annulled one of the projects into which the scheme is divided, on the grounds that its Environmental Impact Declaration (DIA) has expired: the amended project number 2 of phase 2 of the northern access to the motor circuit in Granadilla de Abona.

An 2011 declaration with a five-year deadline

The ruling, to which Canarias Ahora has had access, recalls that the DIA was approved in 2011 with one condition: it would lapse if the works did not begin within a maximum of five years. The Cabildo, for its part, argues that the works began a few days before the deadline and maintains that it is enough to prove that the work has started, without being required to prove how much of the overall project has been carried out.

The TSJC notes that just 1.5% of the total project has been executed and argues that environmental legislation has changed “substantially” since the DIA was approved more than eleven years ago. “The technicians of the Office of technical-legal support to the CEAT (Tenerife Environmental Evaluation Commission) observe that the works carried out so far are of scant significance in relation to the scale of the project,” the ruling states. They add, moreover, that the environmental conditions of the land where the sports complex is to be developed may have changed since 2011.

ATAN celebrates the ruling

ATAN has welcomed the TSJC’s decision and insists that “nobody at the Cabildo can say they didn’t know”. “Its own technicians and the ombudsman warned of the illegality, and even so Rosa Dávila (CC) and, before her, Pedro Martín (PSOE) pressed ahead with the project, squandering public money and destroying a beautiful tabaiba scrubland in the south of Tenerife in an attitude of local bossism,” they stress in a statement.

“As if that were not enough, to this day they have not cancelled it, riding roughshod over the law and the courts to impose their policy of faits accomplis. It is extremely curious how hospital and educational works, among others, can drag on for decades, and how quickly this destruction has been carried out, with its ‘war machines’ against the territory, knowing that they were not going to win in the courts,” they add.

ATAN is demanding the immediate halt of the works and the restoration of the affected land. “The president of the Cabildo, Rosa Dávila, and her councillor for the Natural Environment, Blanca Pérez, have demonstrated their total inability to manage Tenerife’s extraordinary heritage. Their actions and their lack of respect for the conservation of its territory contradict their stale and populist political rhetoric,” they assert.

Supreme Court confirmed the DIA had expired

This judicial decision comes on top of the order issued by the Supreme Court on 30 September confirming that the environmental impact declaration had expired. The High Court dismissed an appeal lodged by the Tenerife Cabildo for “lack of sufficient grounds” and “absence of objective cassational interest”, and ordered the Cabildo to pay the court costs up to a maximum of 1,000 euros. This was the appeal filed by the Cabildo against the first ruling issued by the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) on the motor circuit.

That ruling dismissed the appeal lodged by the corporation headed by Rosa Dávila and confirmed the annulment of the Project for Earthworks and Installations for Removable Grandstands at the circuit. This is one of the four projects into which the scheme is divided, which aims to occupy 650,000 square metres of land in the municipality of Granadilla and involves an initial public investment of 51 million euros.

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