The legacy of foreign extractive capital in the industrial tomato export business has led the Southeast Intermunicipal Association of Gran Canaria, chaired by Óscar Hernández Suárez, to approve a new emergency call for proposals with a budget of 1.5 million euros to expand the plan for cleaning abandoned greenhouses in the municipalities of Agüimes, Ingenio, and Santa Lucía de Tirajana. This financial injection, managed through a competitive bidding process, aims to ensure the continuity of the employment plan linked to the cleanup of the airport area and the main access roads to the island's southern tourist region, given the exhaustion of the initially designated plots.
The operational deployment launched by the regional authority has progressed rapidly since its inception last June. After initially targeting a minimum of 50 hectares, the workers assigned to employment programs have cleared 61 hectares, maintaining simultaneous operations on another 6,68 hectares and projecting the completion of the remaining 42 hectares before the end of the year. This pace exceeds initial forecasts and puts the regional authority on the verge of exhausting the land reserves allocated in the first phase, which totaled just over 100 hectares in the region.
The current intervention model is based on the results of the first plan implemented throughout 2024, during which 90 hectares were remediated, 720 tons of waste were removed, and 86 jobs were created. However, this year presents different operational challenges, as the newly incorporated plots have a lower density of solid waste and less wire, a technical factor that used to significantly slow down the dismantling work by field workers.
To maintain the jobs in the current employment program—which employs 83 unemployed people and is set to expire in March 2027—the Commonwealth relies on a designated contribution of €1,8 million from the Employment Department of the Gran Canaria Island Council. Under this financial framework, the in-kind subsidy now being offered is subject to a suspensive condition linked to the availability of adequate and sufficient funds in the budget for the next fiscal year.
The application period for owners of agricultural plots located within the intervention areas will remain open for twenty business days from the date of official publication in the Official Gazette of the Province of Las Palmas. The regulations strictly define four priority areas for intervention. The first encompasses the La Laguna area, adjacent to the Arinaga Natural Monument, with 57 hectares of degraded land with significant visual impact. The central area, with the greatest landscape significance, is located east of the GC-1 motorway, in the air approach corridor from El Burrero to Bahía Forma, with an estimated 106 hectares. The western sector between the GC-1 and GC-191 highways covers 53 hectares in the vicinity of Pozo Izquierdo, while the fourth sector, situated inland between the GC-65 and GC-104 highways with 30 hectares, receives a lower score, as the administration prioritizes areas with greater visibility for road traffic and tourism.
In terms of logistics and waste management, the cleanup operation is facing administrative bottlenecks following the expiration of the previous materials removal contract. Although the main contract has been awarded to the company Martínez Cano for €141.276, the lack of finalization means that plant debris and plastics are still accumulating on the already cleaned plots, preventing an accurate count of the tons of waste removed during this four-month period. Simultaneously, the intermunicipal body is processing the award of the second contract, specifically focused on the removal of complex waste such as Bayco thread, initially budgeted at €33.705.
