PHOTOS: Sergio Betancort.
The former mayor of Arrecife and former president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Enrique Pérez Parrilla, returned this Thursday to the Arrecife City Council to kick off the San Ginés festivities. The veteran politician was supported by family members and also by colleagues from the PSOE, who attended this event in the Plenary Hall of the Consistory.
In addition, he also reunited with former colleagues from the Corporation, of which he was mayor in the past legislature. In his proclamation, Pérez Parrilla recalled memories and experiences of the capital and these festivities, which officially started this Thursday.
His words, between ironic and nostalgic, showed a happy past of a child, with games in the street or on the plains, in puddles and low tide. However, he also recalled that at that time, Arrecife "was a city without running water, with pigsties inside and swarms of flies, in which children died from simple diarrhea".
"It is true that history is written by the survivors and all the heralds are. If those who stayed on the road, or left in search of better horizons, could write it, they would write very different things," he stressed.
Regarding the patron saint festivities, the former mayor of Arrecife recalled that during his childhood and youth, although the festivities were celebrated in his honor, San Ginés remained locked in his church, "because in that period of national-Catholicism, praying to the saint and having fun were incompatible".
In addition, Pérez Parrilla also left other messages and took advantage of the municipal tribune to warn of the risk of hydrocarbon exploitation off the coast of Lanzarote, "a threat not only to the marine environment, but also to our model economic based on tourism".
"A city that has always given more than it has received"
The herald said goodbye by pointing out that "Arrecife has always been a city that has given Lanzarote more than it has received and on which have accumulated all the problems generated by an overflowing growth. The future of the island is hopeful but for this it will be necessary, again, that from Arrecife the resistance to which the capital commits us and the future demands us".
The mayor of Arrecife and host of the event, Manuel Fajardo, gave a warm welcome to Enrique Pérez Parrilla, highlighted his facet as a citizen and pointed out that, in addition to having shared "passionate public debates and private" and having related as teacher and student, "we are united by the love for this city and the conviction that another Arrecife is possible".
The Councilor for Festivities, Víctor Sanginés, made an extensive tour of the academic and public career of the herald, highlighting his firm commitment to freedoms and political achievements for which he will go down in history, such as "the approval of the first Island Plan for Territorial Planning of Canarias, in Lanzarote, and the installation in the collective consciousness of concepts such as sustainability of development, capacity of load or growth control".