The mayor of Mogán, Onalia Bueno, rejects the criticisms from the councillor for the Environment of the Cabildo of Gran Canaria, Raúl García Brink, regarding the licenses granted in the Veneguera ravine. Bueno asserts that the Town Hall acted in compliance with court rulings and that the true responsible for the legal uncertainty is the island institution.
The mayor of Mogán, Onalia Bueno, has responded to the statements made by the councillor for the Environment of the Cabildo of Gran Canaria, Raúl García Brink, who questioned the licenses granted by the Town Hall for actions in the Veneguera ravine promoted by Costa Canaria de Veneguera, linked to the Lopesan Group. Bueno maintains that the municipal resolutions were adopted in execution of court rulings and with the support of legal reports, and that the Cabildo seeks to divert attention from its own years of inaction.
The mayor recalls that the ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands on December 15, 2014, already warned that the lack of approval of the Natural Resource Management Plan (PORN) for the Rural Park of Nublo would lead to the loss of validity of its declaration and would leave the Management and Use Plan (PRUG) unsupported. The Supreme Court confirmed this doctrine. Years earlier, in 2012, another ruling had reached similar conclusions regarding the Tamadaba Natural Park.
Despite this, the Cabildo of Gran Canaria did not begin the preparation of the Nublo-Tamadaba PORN until May 28, 2021. That is to say, almost nine years passed since the Tamadaba ruling and more than six since that of the Rural Park of Nublo without the island administration acting to restore legal certainty. “The rulings were there, the legal consequences were also there, but those who today present themselves as defenders of the territory let the years go by without providing a solution,” says Bueno.
The mayor emphasises that the precautionary measures now invoked by the Cabildo, provided for in Article 23 of Law 42/2007 on Natural Heritage and Biodiversity, did not exist when many of the files related to Veneguera began. It was a plenary agreement of the Cabildo in 2021, published in the BOC on July 7, that established these precautionary measures for the spaces included in the processing of the PORN. “It is important to explain the complete chronology and not analyse the facts as if they had occurred in 2026,” states Bueno.
In the so-called Section 4, the company submitted the license application in April 2017 for the channeling of the ravine and the conditioning of the road. The Island Water Council authorised it in March 2018. However, the Environmental Service of the Cabildo issued an unfavourable report in August 2018 and, therefore, the Town Hall denied the license in April 2019. The company appealed and obtained a favourable ruling from the TSJC, number 291/2023, dated July 13, 2023, which concluded that the denial could not be based on the PRUG of the Rural Park of Nublo because it lacked validity. In execution of that ruling, the Town Hall granted the license in April 2024.
In Section 2, the processing began in September 2017 and the Island Water Council authorised it in May 2022. By then, the Town Hall already had legal reports warning of the need to disregard the PRUG due to its loss of effectiveness, in addition to the existing judicial pronouncements. “The Town Hall had to resolve complex procedures amid reports, authorisations, and contradictory pronouncements from the Cabildo,” points out Bueno. The mayor recalls that a formal request was made for a pronouncement from the island president, Antonio Morales, but it never arrived.
Bueno insists that the Town Hall did not make arbitrary decisions nor ignored environmental criteria, but acted in a context of legal uncertainty generated by the island institution itself. “For years we did not hear the president of the Cabildo explain why the PORN was still not approved,” she concludes. The mayor defends that the licenses granted were in strict compliance with the law and judicial resolutions, and calls on the Cabildo to assume its responsibility for the situation created.
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