Let no one be fooled by the formal language of official bulletins. When the Deputy Minister of Territorial Planning, Elena Zárate Altamirano, signs the announcement of the public consultation period for the Strategic Environmental Assessment of the El Veril Plan, she is not simply fulfilling a formality. She is tossing a coin in the most turbulent political arena in San Bartolomé de Tirajana.
We're talking about the Kiessling family's long-standing project. An investment that has been through more courts than a rock star and is now entering a critical phase: 45 business days for environmentalists, conflicting interests, and defenders of "competitiveness" to bring out the knives. It's the Ordinary Environmental Assessment, the final exam for a project that aims to transform a dry valley into the largest water park in Europe.
The "Scope Document" Trap
The announcement is cryptic. The Deputy Ministry states, with the coldness that only power affords, that the purpose of this consultation is to gather information for the "Scope Document," without considering any other factors. In other words, the discussion here is about birds, ravines, and visual impact. Money, jobs, and the feuds between hotel families must, for the time being, stay out of the room.
But in the Canary Islands, we know that environmental issues are the perfect battleground for political warfare. The Draft Modernization Plan and its Initial Strategic Document are already on the table. They are the blueprints for a battle that has been raging for a decade. The Canary Islands Government, under the leadership of the Canarian Coalition and its partners, is attempting with this move to reignite the engine of competitiveness in the South, that "resilient luxury" we discussed in our chronicles of economic power, while critics sharpen their arguments regarding water consumption and the impact on the Playa del Inglés coastline.
A dizzying calendar for 2026
The 45 business days place the end of this phase on the cusp of spring 2026. If the file emerges clean from this process, the Gran Canaria Siam Park will have overcome its penultimate hurdle. But in San Bartolomé, nothing is simple. Between uncollected garbage containers and municipal contracts under suspicion, the El Veril PMM stands as the jewel in the crown... or as the latest mausoleum of Canarian bureaucracy.
We will be watching closely. Because after Zárate Altamirano's signature and the deadlines set by Law 21/2013, what's at stake is not just an environmental report, but who truly controls the land overlooking the Atlantic. El Veril is once again the subject of legal proceedings, as if the water that has yet to flow down its slides were already the blood of a wound that refuses to heal. Those who write laws seem to forget that the landscape has its own memory, and that no matter how many modernization plans are signed, the land always ends up remembering who it belonged to before money gave it a foreign name. When the noise of the appeals fades and the ink on the reports dries, the sea will still be there, oblivious to the legal deadlines, knowing that the only plan that cannot be challenged is the plan of the waves always returning to the same shore.
