The Canary Islands Government has presented this week the architectural projects for the construction of two ‘twin buildings’, one in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the capital of Tenerife, and the other in Telde, Gran Canaria, which will house the essential services of the autonomous community and will cost approximately 80 million euros.
The Canary Islands Vice-President, Román Rodríguez, together with the Regional Minister of Public Administration, Justice and Security, Julio Pérez, and the Regional Minister of Health, Blas Trujillo, and the Mayoress of Telde, Carmen Hernández, presided over the ceremony at the Presidency headquarters in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, a presentation which will be held next week in Santa Cruz de Tenerife with the Mayor of the capital of Tenerife, José Manuel Bermúdez.
Rodríguez said that the construction of the buildings is intended to provide a more efficient service to citizens in particularly sensitive areas and that, from this point of view, it constitutes a “service to the country”. As the vice-president recalled, the project was already contemplated in the 2020 Autonomous Community Budget Law, but had to be postponed as a result of the pandemic.
Thus, in 2021, with the participation of the ministries responsible for the provision of the services that will be housed in the building, a functional plan was approved, the basis for the implementation project. The Executive will allocate around 80 million euros to the buildings, 90% of which will come from European funds and the rest from its own financing.
In this respect, Rodríguez stressed that the European Union foresees the use of funds for infrastructures of these characteristics and that, furthermore, the Community Executive has welcomed the essential buildings project, which will also be presented in Brussels. The idea is to put the project out to tender as soon as possible so that the work can be completed before 2026.
Pérez, for his part, said that the buildings are the clearest manifestation of the Canary Islands Government’s commitment to security, the main demand of any society, which is also a generator of the economy.
AN EXTRAORDINARY MILESTONE
Minister Trujillo highlighted the project as an “extraordinary milestone” for improving efficiency in the provision of basic public services in a more integrated and coordinated manner and recalled, for example, the 388,000 requests for help received by the Canary Islands Emergency Service last year.
Hernández highlighted the location of the building in Jinámar, an area close to the GC-1 and the airport, and expressed the willingness of Telde City Council to collaborate in order to execute, as soon as possible, a project of a strategic nature for the island of Gran Canaria and for the whole of the Canary Islands.
The Director General of Heritage and Contracting, José Julián Isturitz, detailed the fundamental aspects of the buildings and the services that will be located in the buildings, which will house 550 people each. The buildings, each measuring 23,000 square metres, will be located in Jinámar, in Telde, and in Tíncer, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. They will operate as a single structure with two locations so that one mirrors the other, which will allow them to be operational in the event of a failure in one of them.
Both buildings are located in accordance with the strategic principle of ensuring optimum accessibility and interconnection with the main urban-territorial road infrastructures. Likewise, these locations should facilitate easy interrelation with other essential services, especially those linked to critical areas related to the care and protection of citizens.
Their design has also foreseen their capacity to cope with exceptional seismic and volcanological situations, or those derived from adverse meteorological phenomena, according to the Executive.
Among the services that the buildings will house are 1-1-2; the control centres of the security and emergency services (health emergencies, Civil Protection, Fire Brigade, Maritime Rescue and Canary Islands Police, among others); the 012 information telephone number; the cybercentre and the social tele-assistance telephones.