Frigiliana takes a mobile phone antenna to the courthouse next to a nursery
The City Council presents a dispute to the operators of the post installed two decades ago, for which enters 6,500 euros a year
The City of Frigiliana has decided to take action on the issue of the mobile telephone antenna located inside the premises of the municipal nursery, a site in which it has been installed for two decades. In the last plenary session, held at the end of last month, the PSOE government in the minority approved, with the support of the PP and the abstention of the PA, to initiate legal actions against the two telecommunications operators (Vodafone and Orange) that exploit this post , by which the Consistory enters 6,500 euros per year in rent concept.
This antenna has been subject to continuous neighborhood criticism, for being located within the urban area, in an environment in which around a thousand people live, and where they are very close, in addition to the nursery, other equipment such as the doctor’s office, the house of culture, a multipurpose center and the library. However, the previous government teams, from the PA between 1995 and 2015, and until February 2017 the PP, had not decided to take legal measures. Residents came to collect more than 500 signatures in 2014 asking the Consistory to withdraw.
The municipal government at that time, chaired by the Andalusian Javier Lopez, argued that the Ministry of Industry reports showed that the antenna’s emission levels were “within the limits of the law”. “It is not only a question of health, because of the danger it may pose, but it is also for aesthetic reasons, we can not have that antenna in the middle of the town, with those dimensions,” said the mayor, Alejandro Herrero (PSOE).
Neighbors report that in the area there have been several cases of cancer in these 20 years. The Consistory has offered the operators several alternative locations, and is willing to assume part of the cost of the transfer, valued at 50,000 euros. In the session PSOE and PP also approved, with the abstention of the PA, an ordinance to regulate the installation of antennas in the urban case, with the limitation that they must be at a minimum of 200 meters from public centers. The post was installed in 1999, for a period of 50 years.
