Tenerife Magazine’s round up of some of the most interesting news stories of the week in Tenerife.
La Gomera’s Parador is in La Laguna
Council workers in La Laguna have been checking out Google Maps and Tripadvisor recently and found amongst other things that a number of street names were incorrect. The street name confusion is understandable. Councils often changes street names, having to remove all references to Franco caused a whole string of new names, so it’s difficult for Google to keep up to date. What was worse though was that Google also showed a “˜flag’ locating San Miguel de Abona in La Laguna. Anyone who uses Google maps regularly will know this sort of geographical inaccuracy is not uncommon. Tripadvisor managed to top that one. According to the report, the travel advisory site had some hotels located in the south of Tenerife as being in La Laguna”¦as well as La Gomera’s Parador.
The end of Veronicas as we know it?
This is one of those “˜watch this space’ sort of news reports, but Arona council have announced the intention to give a facelift to an area of Playa de las Américas that they say is degraded i.e. Veronicas. There’s talk of demolishing buildings and starting afresh. Is this the beginning of the end of an era? Might be a mistake if the council throws out all of the bread and butter in favour of only prawn sandwiches.
The Luxury Iberostar Hotel Mencey in Santa Cruz
Anyone who has been following our weekly news roundup may remember last year that we included a piece about the renovation of the grand old Hotel Mencey in Santa Cruz back in May 2010. Then it was hoped the hotel would re-open by Christmas. Well, they didn’t quite make it, but the good news is that a date for reopening has now been set”¦provisionally. As long as everything goes to plan the new revamped super Iberostar luxury hotel (now 250 rooms instead of 289) will be ready for guests from September 2011. The casino may open a couple of months prior to that date. Let’s hope it will be worth the wait.
Cock of the north”¦well east
Police officers in Candelaria are facing a dangerous job this week. They’ve got the go ahead to capture four crowing cockerels that have been guilty of constantly interrupting residents’ sleep for the last two years. Everybody knows that it’s a cockerel’s job to let the farmer know when it’s time to get up, but these guys’ clocks are a bit out ““ they believe dawn arrives at 3am and start singing from then. Locals are looking forward to a good night’s sleep as soon as the four culprits are apprehended and thrown in the big hen house.
No TV in Palm-Mar
Tenerife can be a frustrating place to live for a number of reasons, but one of the main ones is that when something goes wrong, nobody accepts responsibility, or even wants to know. Take this ridiculous situation in Palm-Mar in Arona. Apparently two thousand people lose their TDT signal each night at midnight when the “˜generator’ responsible for transmitting the TV signal switches off. Residents have complained to the council who helpfully responded with a “˜nothing to do with us’. Then they tried the TV companies, but as there isn’t actually a fault with the signal, there was nothing they could do. So residents have been left without TV after midnight and unable to resolve their problem and unsure of which Pontius Pilate to approach next.
And finally the TIT (This Is Tenerife) of the week award goes to the Federación Canaria del Ocio (Fecao)
The federation, which represents bars and restaurants in the Canary Islands, has announced that it is urging its members to close their establishments on the 9th March ““ the day the Burial of the Sardine is held at Santa Cruz and Puerto de la Cruz carnivals.
The protest is against the anti-tobacco law introduced on 2nd January this year and the loss of custom bars have experienced as a result. Fecao hope this action and future planned protests will make the government re-asses the severity of the law.
In the announcement the president of Fecao claimed that almost 100% of their clients were smokers. One hundred per cent! Where that statistic came from is unclear, but it does seem slightly suspect. Maybe he meant 100% of the people who were against the law were smokers.
It’s understandable that emotions run high regarding the subject of smoking, or no-smoking in this case, but much of the world has moved on years ago regarding laws relating to smoking in bars. There is not going to be a backward step, not from the more enlightened countries anyway. So it’s time to leave the playground guys and enter the big wide world outside. Shut your bars by all means if it helps you get things off your chests”¦we’ll all be at the Burial of the Sardine anyway.
Comments are closed.