The Gent de Denia Group, first of all, considers that it is necessary to dedicate the maximum effort to obtain subsidies that help improve infrastructure and the quality of life in our city. It also considers that it is necessary to prioritize actions and not carry out isolated actions that may impede mobility and coexistence between pedestrians, cyclists, vehicles, loading and unloading, the market, commerce, hotels, offices, etc. We think that applying for a grant to the Alicante Provincial Council for the Pedestrianization Works of Glorieta Pais Valencià and Marqués de Campo without a global plan for the entire city that justifies undertaking the works at the moment, is at least crazy. It is not possible to go sticking blindly by pedestrianizing areas of the city randomly, as this will cause that instead of humanizing it, what we will do is make it inaccessible and uninhabitable. Even more in the economic moments that we are suffering and the uncertainty that the near future holds for us.
In order for businesses, both downtown and neighborhoods to function, they need mobility capacity, if the accesses to business areas are closed and there is no guarantee that there will be free or cheap nearby parking, an immediate transport service, or services promotion and ease of use of trade and hospitality, it will be difficult for those small entrepreneurs who also suffer from internet sales, shopping centers and this crisis like no other. Why these other sales systems work: because their use is easy. If we make it HARD, we will gradually end the battered local economy.
Although a priori it seems that pedestrianization benefits the hospitality industry, it is not really true. Well, this is real when there is an influx of tourists, because they can fill their businesses, but in the off-season months and on weekdays, the streets are deserted. When there is movement of vehicles, businesses also move. Why the municipal market works, apart from the quality of its products, because customers have other alternatives than going loaded with the purchase to Torrecremada, to the port or to Joan Fuster, which would be what would happen if the center to traffic.
We do not want to lose the grant, we do not say that these projects are not technically correct. It could be these or others, but always planning, studying mobility, parking lots, first we would look for the creation of nearby parking spaces, call it the reversal of the La Vía parking lot, look for central parking lots, such as the building on Calle Patricio Ferrándiz-Carlos Sentí- Calle La via, etc ..., that is, giving alternatives to pedestrianization. We think that a GLOBAL MOBILITY PROJECT and a GLOBAL SOCIO-ECONOMIC STUDY is NECESSARY and subsequently undertake, based on this, the measures and works necessary to pedestrianize the Glorieta, Marqués de Campos and other streets, if the Plan considers it and agrees with all the sectors.
Therefore, much to our regret, we are NOT going to support the application for this grant, because we would request it for other more urgent projects. Because we are facing an image policy. Because they forget the other neighborhoods, which suffer great deficiencies and dedicate themselves mainly to the center, which is what is most seen. Because we think that this grant should be dedicated to other more necessary and urgent works, that there are many.