Port protester take to the streets

Organisers claim 50,000; one TV station put the number at 2,000, and city police say it was 15,000.

It’s claimed the project, designed to ease congestion at Santa Cruz, will deal crippling blows to the island’s tourism and ecology. Building work on the port, planned to cover about five kilometers of coastline on the south of the island, was halted almost as soon as it started at the end of February as legal battle lines were drawn up.

The port authority and the Canary Islands’ government are appealing against a Spanish Supreme Court decision to uphold an injunction introduced by environmental group Ben Magec, whose members are angry about the government’s decision to remove protection for the marine habitat that will be lost if the development proceeds.

Local and European Union greens, together with marine biologists, are lobbying Madrid to cancel the project, which includes terminals for transhipment, dry bulk and an LNG regasificiation plant.