from my website ...
This post has been eight years in the making, and its subject matter has occupied many years more than that. It has seen court action and environmental protests about underwater grasses and overground beetles, a stand-off about vested and conflicting financial and political interests, and even a debate over the very nature of “progress” itself, but finally, at long last, the Granadilla megaport works are finished.
Puertos de Tenerife say that the project was officially signed off in a formal ceremony yesterday morning with the Ministerio de Fomento. The port is now open, and will progressively become a full complement to Santa Cruz docks, increasingly so as the finishing works on the second section of the Ribera Quay will provide a further 160m of docking space. In total, the works have cost just over €145m, €67m of which has come from the EU Cohesion Fund.
Yesterday’s opening ceremony was attended by the president of the Santa Cruz Ports Authority, former Tenerife president Ricardo Melchior, who said that the new port was already organizing practical and mooring logistics, and contracting personnel, etc., to be able to service Granadilla’s first berths. These are now confirmed to include oil rigs undergoing repair and maintenance, adding to the numbers already regularly seen in Santa Cruz itself.