EH Bildu, PSN, Geroa Bai and Contigo-Zurekin demand that the ZIP project be declared the winner for the remodeling of Paseo Sarasate.

PAMPLONA, Sept. 4.

The municipal groups of EH Bildu, PSN, Geroa Bai and Contigo Navarra-Zurekin Nafarroa in the Pamplona City Council have presented a declaration, which will be debated this Wednesday in the Urban Planning commission, in which they consider that the government team "must accept the result of the preliminary project competition for the re-urbanization of Paseo Sarasate, declare the ZIP project as the winner and apply the 50,000 euro amendment approved in February to commission an update".

In the declaration, the groups state that "the difference between this proposal and the one that Mayor Cristina Ibarrola wants to implement (resuming the project that Na+ had to leave in a drawer) is that the ZIP project guarantees that the redesign of the promenade will be done from a single platform (without different heights) and ensuring the continuity of the trees".

In the text, the four groups highlight that the current promenade "represents a pedestrian border between the Old Town and the First Expansion that should be transformed in terms of sustainable mobility into a hinge between the two neighborhoods without architectural barriers".

The declaration states that "two legislative periods ago, an architecture competition was held, following the opinion of the neighborhood and the Mancomunidad, to achieve this objective and whose result should have been subject to public exhibition in search of a consensus." "However, UPN-PP ignored the selected proposals and decided, without consulting anyone, to carry out a new project, the result of which did not solve the impact of certain barriers," they criticized.

In their view, "this attitude and unjustified unilateral decision opened a way to politicize and confront politically with the rest of the groups, constantly hiding behind the issue of trees". The result, as stated in the declaration, "was the decision of UPN and PP to not accept the criterion of the municipal majority, which endorsed the ZIP project, and to block and abandon the remodelling of Sarasate".

The groups emphasize that "despite this maneuver, the opposition approved an amendment in February to declare the ZIP project as the winner of the competition and to commission its update (50,000 euros) with those improvement issues that arise as a result of the debate".

For the groups, this sequence of events "justifies the other point of agreement in the declaration," which is "to denounce the attitude of UPN and PP during the last 5 years, which has resulted in an unjustifiable paralysis and delay in the new design".