The City Council of Puerto del Rosario reaffirmed this Monday its commitment to heritage protection and legal certainty in urban development, with the approval of two fundamental agreements in the municipal plenary, focused on the area of La Cornisa Norte.
On the one hand, the Minor Modification of the General Urban Development Plan (PGOU) was initially approved to strictly comply with the judgment of the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands No. 371/2021, which required the correction of a technical error in the urban development file of unit AD 1.1.4. This modification adjusts the parameters of urban development and the compulsory transfer to the City Council, in compliance with the court ruling, without altering or extending the current planning.
Simultaneously, the Urban Environment Action Program (PAMU) promoted by the owners of the area was rejected, as it was found that the proposal exceeded the scope of the ruling and proposed a new urban development plan, including changes in heights, buildability and plot distribution, which did not correspond to the object of the court decision.
Both decisions are fully consistent with the work that the City Council has been developing from the area of Historical Heritage, especially after the recent initial approval of the first Municipal Catalog of Cultural Heritage Assets, which incorporates 843 elements of architectural, historical and landscape value. This catalog already contemplated, in a justified way, the exclusion of the 16 properties located in La Cornisa Norte for being directly affected by the court ruling.
As a measure of institutional responsibility, the Plenary also agreed to the precautionary suspension of urban planning licenses that may affect the area of La Cornisa, to ensure that no interventions take place that compromise the process of modifying the planning or the content of the catalog being processed.
The mayor of Puerto del Rosario, David de Vera, stressed that “with these decisions the City Council acts responsibly, combining the protection of heritage with strict compliance with the urban planning legality. It is not just a matter of respecting a sentence, but of consolidating a vision of a city that is more orderly and respectful of its history”.
The councilman of Historical Heritage, David de León, recalled that “the protection of La Cornisa Norte is an institutional priority. We have already demonstrated our commitment to heritage by approving the municipal catalog and now we are acting consistently to safeguard a unique environment that is part of our collective memory”.
For her part, the Councilor for Urban Planning, Ana Hernandez, explained that “the PAMU could not succeed because it does not conform to the determinations of the ruling and there is no justification for the supervening needs of general interest of the municipality that could motivate a change in the determinations of management reflected in the general planning, beyond those required by compliance with the ruling”.
