The Lánzate LGTBI+ Association has lamented that Lanzarote is still not considered a “gay friendly” island because “no public or private entity has shown the slightest interest in betting on quality tourism”; a claim that has been made taking advantage of the fact that this May 17th commemorates the elimination of homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses by the World Health Organization (WHO). In this sense, the association has complained that Lanzarote has remained invisible in everything related to LGTBI+.
The Lánzate Association of the Canary Islands has pointed out the need to have a “sustainable tourism model in Lanzarote that maintains the pillars of an LGTBI+ tourist who spends 3 times more than the average in the destination”, as has been verified by the island of Gran Canaria, "which is the European leader in LGTBI+ tourism in the low season”. However, Lanzarote is not even “friendly for tourists or LGTBI+ residents”, Lánzate has criticized, stressing that “the cases of same-sex couples vilely kicked out of establishments in Lanzarote are a good example of this”.
“The exclusion of an increasingly vulnerable community is reflected beyond the tourism sector, with dozens of cases of LGTBI-phobic bullying occurring in schools and institutes in Lanzarote”, the association has pointed out. For this reason, Lánzate has defended that it is “necessary to normalize, educate and have affective-sexual diversity”; as well as “the necessary empathy to put oneself in the place of those people who day after day have to suffer the looks, insults, vexations and aggressions of those who do not understand the freedom of sexual orientation and identity”.
"Group condemned to oblivion and absolute helplessness"
Lánzate has assured that there is a “lack of equality, which is also portrayed in the treatment that the different laws make of this diversity”, condemning this group “many times to oblivion, if not to the most absolute helplessness”. Thus, they have pointed out that the associations that fight for the rights of this community, when they look back, can see “everything that our democratic and advanced society has yet to go through in the normalization of affective-sexual diversity”.
Lánzate, which was born 10 years ago as a point of “advice, refuge and protection” for the LGTBI+ community, has expressed these problems that they face on the island, taking advantage of a day to “not forget the discrimination that is suffered today and with the aim of fighting for rights, visibility and normalization in matters of sexual orientation and identity”.
The association has also stressed that its work is of “struggle day after day for equality and human rights, not only on days like today, not only in an LGTBI+ Pride (LGTBI+ Demonstration)”. “Because the real fight cannot be won in a single day”, he added.
