Tenerife Magazine’s round up of some of the most interesting news stories of the week in Tenerife.
Paying to Climb Mount Teide
CIT, the Centre for Initiatives and Tourism, in Santa Cruz has put forward a proposal to charge €5 to anyone wanting to climb to the summit of Mount Teide, Spain’s highest mountain. They say the charge would help fund maintenance, research and conservation, arguing that 90% of those who have to pay would be tourists and as tourists they’re used to paying charges in parks in other parts of Europe. I’ve three words to say to CIT ““ Barranco del Infierno. It’s one of the only other beauty spots on Tenerife that visitors have to pay to enjoy and which just happens to be closed indefinitely because of fears about what might happen if anyone is injured walking Hell’s Ravine. What happens the first time someone slips on Teide’s peak?
Confusion in El Médano
The saga of the Hotel El Médano continued to twist and turn as the Spanish government’s representative to Tenerife, Antonio Batista announced that nobody had ever said the hotel was going to be demolished, it was only ever the hotel’s terrace that was in danger. Really? So all that furore about pulling down the hotel and maybe even some of the other buildings next to it was a Dallas type dream we all had then?
Ban people from Driving to Teno
A ‘close everything to the public’ plague seems to be sweeping through Tenerife at the moment. The mayor of Buenavista del Norte has called for the road leading to Punto Teno to be closed. There are huge signs in three languages warning that the road shouldn’t be used on rainy or windy days because of the potential dangers from rock fall, but mayor Victor Lorenzo says that everyone ignores them. Surely the signs are enough? The road leads to a beauty spot with stunning views and to close it would be to deprive visitors of another of Tenerife’s beauty spots (once again we mention Barranco del Infierno). Do politicians really want to create an island where everybody sticks to the safety of their holiday complexes? Before long they’ll be putting up signs in the arrivals hall stating ‘don’t leave the building, Mother Nature is on the prowl here’. Could somebody please start dishing out the common sense pills?
Tourism on the Up
Thank goodness, a ray of light amidst all of the Tenerife shenanigans that have you seeking out a wall to bang your head against, tourist figures for people visiting the Canary Islands in September are up nearly 13% on last year. During the month, 623,110 visitors enjoyed a holiday on one of the Canary Islands.
Cruising in La Paz
What is going on in the heads of the people in the town hall in Puerto de la Cruz? Right wing Spanish paper La Opinion recently printed an article about ‘Cruising in Tenerife’ and we’re not talking about the big white shiny things that sail into Santa Cruz. We’re talking about men meeting for sex in public places. This was followed by a report about the police and town council in Puerto de la Cruz being concerned about ‘Cruising in La Paz, especially in an area known apparently as the mountain of love (aka Paseo del Acebuche). The nationalist council in Puerto have been accused in the past of being homophobic and Tenerife’s gay rights movements consider their attitudes to be from Franco’s era. The council have denied this, issuing a statement along the lines of “We do not pursue anyone for their sexual orientation: we do not care that they are heterosexual or homosexual. The problem is that keeping sex in public places may offend others or affect sensitive groups such as minors or the disabled.”
WHAT?
Putting the homophobic charges aside for a second, there’s a statement that tells you all you need to know about where these people are coming from (and what century): sensitive groups such as minors or the disabled – for god’s sake don’t expose anyone with a disability to sex, eh? That sort of thinking is positively scary.
The second thing that intrigues is that Paseo del Acebuche is an out of the way obscure spot (I had to Google it to find exactly where it was). It isn’t the sort of place where anyone would accidentally wander past. How on earth did someone in the council know it was a popular place for gay sex? They should be spending their time and efforts sorting out Puerto’s real problems.
And finally the TIT (This Is Tenerife) of the week award goes to… Education on Tenerife
It was frustrating and annoying to learn about yet another situation on Tenerife where children’s education is under threat because of cuts resulting in students having no teachers to educate them.
Parents in Alcalá displayed the depth of their feelings and frustration by chaining shut the Aponte de Alcalá College as a protest against educational cuts which have led to some students being without a teacher for over a month. Sadly, this isn’t an isolated case. Each week there are reports of schools and colleges on Tenerife having classes without teachers and not so long ago we commented on the fact that employees in one school hadn’t been paid for 5 months.
Messing with education in this manner is simply not acceptable and wishy-washy excuses from the authorities involved only highlight their impotence and unsuitability for the positions they hold.
This week protesters shouting for Canary Island independence in Santa Cruz and La Laguna proclaimed their Guanche heritage. If politicians continue cutting education budgets, there’s a chance that Tenerife’s young people may end up about as educated as their adopted primitive forefathers.
