The city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife is the heart of the island, a modern city that throbs with life and has taken a step forward to position itself as one of the best cities in Spain to live in, to discover, to visit and to start up a business.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife is commerce, restaurants, leisure, communications, tourism, a place of business opportunities for companies and a city of reference, and there are plenty of arguments to prove it. The capital of Tenerife has tax incentives that have put it at the forefront of the best cities in Spain for investment, with tax incentives implemented by the City Hall of Santa Cruz de Tenerife as an instrument for the reactivation of the municipal economy.
Thanks to these incentives, Santa Cruz de Tenerife already ranks second in Spain in the Index of Economic Freedom of Spanish Cities 2022 of the Advancement of Freedom Foundation. This is not the only index that highlights the city’s tax incentives, as the Madrid Community Tax Ranking Studies Service has already confirmed Santa Cruz as the provincial capital with the lowest taxation.
The IBI of Santa Cruz de Tenerife is at a medium/low level, as is the Tax on Economic Activities (IAE), it has the tax on constructions, installations and works (ICIO) and the lowest Traffic Tax in all of Spain, which is added to the rebate on waste collection fees for SMEs and the self-employed. What are the advantages of investing in Santa Cruz de Tenerife? Already 12,000 self-employed people in the city are exempt from various municipal taxes and 90,000 families have been subsidised, and the same will continue, as in 2023 the tax for opening a business in Santa Cruz de Tenerife will be 100% subsidised.
The set of measures introduced by the City Hall of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the last two terms of office represent a tax saving of 11.2 million euros for families and SMEs, and an unparalleled advantage in the Canary Islands and one of the best in the whole of Spain.
The weather in Santa Cruz de Tenerife is not the only incentive for millions of tourists to come to the city every year to fall in love. In the first six months of 2022, the Tourist Information Services of Santa Cruz have attended to 32,360 people, 60.7% more than in the same period of 2019.
Santa Cruz already has 51 tourist services with the SICTED quality label, including a large part of the accommodation facilities, the main museums and other places of tourist interest. All the work of the Development Society itself, as well as that of the agents, entities, companies and professionals in the tourism sector in the municipality, has made it possible to achieve figures such as 1.7 million tourists visiting the capital in 2022, surpassing the figures of 2021 and placing us almost at pre-pandemic levels.
Or 124,596 cruise passengers in the month of December alone (7 out of 10 of whom visited the city), an increase of 14.6% compared to the pre-pandemic year. Up to 313 cruise ship calls are already scheduled for 2023 in the Port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
With the aim of continuing to grow and, above all, improving these figures for a qualitative leap, the City Hall has announced its intention to inject some 44 million into the capital’s tourist sector over the next six years, an investment which aims to resume the line which the city had set itself before the arrival of the COVID pandemic, and which seeks to be the tourist capital of a tourist island.
As part of the Strategic Tourism Plan, Santa Cruz de Tenerife will implement tourism sustainability plans, with 5 million euros from the Next Generation funds to reconvert the coastline over the next three years, with transformational works such as the northwest breakwater at Las Teresitas and the bicycle lane. In addition, the City Hall plans to develop mobility studies, will invest in improving the capital’s tourist offices with an investment of 895,000 euros, and will make the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Carnival one of the city’s main attractions and an added value for the municipality.
With this objective in mind, the City Hall of the capital of Tenerife has planned a budget of 195,000 euros for the improvement and extension of the Carnival Poster Walk and the creation of a self-guided tourist route of the Santa Cruz Carnival, as well as improvements in signage and tourist products and promotion, which in total will have an economic boost of more than one million euros.
The implementation of a tourism shock plan goes beyond the hotels in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, with an item earmarked for promotion which will involve investing more than 350,000 euros in marketing and commercialisation of the destination, as well as the creation of products, and the recovery of the historical heritage.
WHAT TO DO IN SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE
Santa Cruz de Tenerife has undertaken the largest programme of investment in historical heritage in its history, with a total budget of more than 30 million euros. The aim is to recover emblematic and attractive buildings of the city’s tourist heritage, in order to enrich the things to do in Santa Cruz de Tenerife with history, culture, heritage and tradition.
The cultural agenda of Santa Cruz de Tenerife grows with the Masonic Temple, which will have an investment in works of nearly 3 million euros to enhance the value of the only building constructed in Spain to house a lodge, a unique example and one of the few that exist in Europe. In 2025, the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Masonic Temple will be a building for the study and dissemination of Freemasonry.
The planned works also include the refurbishment of the main building of the BIC building of the Viera y Clavijo cultural park in Tenerife, with more than 12 million euros to return this historical, cultural, emotional, emotional, natural, historical and cultural heritage of the city and the island to the citizens.
Also included in this strategy is the Palacio de Carta, which, with more than one million euros invested in its refurbishment, will become the capital’s main tourist office in a few months’ time.
The City Hall of Santa Cruz de Tenerife has approved the project for the refurbishment of the former School of Applied Arts, located in the Plaza de Ireneo González, a building listed as an Asset of Cultural Interest and whose project includes work on more than 4,800 m2 of floor space, with an investment of more than 7.6 million euros. This is in addition to other investments such as the Palacio de Carta, with 1.3 million euros, and the recovery of the surroundings of the castle of San Andrés, with around one million euros.
EMPLOYMENT IN SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, A POSITIVE TREND FOR THE FUTURE
Santa Cruz de Tenerife recorded a new year-on-year drop in unemployment figures in October, decreasing by 4.5% compared to October 2021, which means 996 fewer unemployed people. For the sixth consecutive month the capital of Tenerife is below the barrier of 21,000 unemployed people and continues a positive trend in 2022.
From October 2021 to October 2022, employment in Santa Cruz de Tenerife has gone from 21,939 to 20,943 unemployed people, with records below 2019 and the best data since 2009.
The behaviour of employment data in the capital is positive since the end of the pandemic. Unemployment has fallen by 1,374 people (6.4% less) compared to the pre-pandemic year (December 2009), from 21,580 in 2019 to 20,206 in December 2022. This means that from May onwards, unemployment levels will be similar to those of 2009.
In addition to the unemployment figures, we must add the very good performance of hiring in the capital, with 119,530 jobs in companies located in Santa Cruz, which represents a maximum in the entire historical series (since 2010).
