The agenda of the Canary Islands Coalition and the PP reveals the low degree of execution of the European Funds under the Executive of the socialist Ángel Víctor Torres. For example, of the 31.5 million euros planned for the creation of places in the first cycle of Children, a competition held by Podemos during the last legislature, as of June 27, only 5 million euros had been executed..
The data from the economic intelligence apparatus of the Canary Islands Government, the so-called Economic-Financial and Logistics System, also indicate that for “person-centered care equipment”, that is the name of item C22.11, with 48.7 million of euros, none have been executed. The tourist disaster of the islands during the covid in all its waves is taken calmly in the Canary Islands: only 18.1 million euros have been executed out of a total budget of 103.4. Regarding item C14.12, “tourism resilience strategies for the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands”, of an expected amount of 70 million, not a single euro has yet been received from Madrid.
The new Canarian Executive has to start the machinery to promote the construction of rental housing. Of a planned item of 22.9 million, only 4.7 have been invested. Nothing has been executed from the 22 million item destined for the rehabilitation of public buildings, which depends on the Canarian Government. And this is how the regional program for the digitization of the education system goes: 50 million euros in budget, 4 million executed as of June 27, 2023.
The president of the Las Palmas construction association, ACEP, María Salud Gil, points out that in the field of infrastructure, the sector is asking for the use of European funds linked to the ecological transition, digital transformation, energy efficiency or community facilities. The decree of European funds linked to the creation of affordable housing stocks in the Canary Islands reserves 700 euros per square meter to build them. In addition, the employers' association of Las Palmas hopes that “a man or a woman who knows the mechanics of budgeting and housing plans will be appointed as head of the General Directorate of Housing, if we are not lost”.
In his opinion, “the problem is that the houses that are built are made for a segment of the population that is solvent, but what really should worry is why houses are not incorporated into the market to balance prices and production costs. And, above all, to attend to the more than 20,000 registered housing applicants”, to whom he believes that many others must be added “who are not because they have no faith in the system”.
“Not only do we have to talk about protected and social housing, we have to talk about housing at affordable prices, so that they can be bought by young people, so that incipient families have the possibility of acquiring them, they are people who do not enter the free market or the protected. What's up with those people?”. Gil stresses that for this we only have to “manage the legal framework in which we find ourselves: now there is a legal framework and financing that allows thousands of affordable homes to be made if the public and private initiatives are able to cooperate”.