The mayor of the Teguise City Council and regional deputy for Lanzarote, Oswaldo Betancort, has demanded that the Canary Islands Government "rectify" the order that also requires a negative Covid test to be presented by Lanzarote residents who want to visit La Graciosa during this Holy Week.
“We can understand the limitation of inter-island mobility established in the measures for the containment of Covid during Holy Week, but it is unacceptable that residents in my municipality, nor the inhabitants of Lanzarote, cannot move freely within their own municipal district or their own island territory if it is not by making that disbursement, with the grievance that this implies for those who had planned to visit La Graciosa or stay in their vacation residence,” argues Betancort.
“My people feel discriminated against and rightly so, because this Pact of Flowers, which once again benefits the capital islands, seems to also want to silence the interests of Lanzarote where the same Socialist Party governs,” said the mayor of Teguise, who states that he expects a "positioning of the Cabildo of Lanzarote in this regard, since Lanzarote and La Graciosa are considered the same sanitary territorial unit.”
“Faced with this new unfair decision that once again affects the citizens of the smaller islands, I will demand that the Minister of Health himself and the Government presided over by the socialist Ángel Víctor Torres rectify this restrictive measure that affects the vacations that Teguise and Lanzarote residents had planned in La Graciosa for Holy Week, and what is obvious, it does a lot of damage to the people of Graciosa who are receiving reservation cancellations, with the economic loss that this implies for the businessmen, who are transmitting their indignation to the municipal representative in La Graciosa, Alicia Páez,” he adds.
Both the first mayor and the delegate councilor also question “the capacity to carry out preventive controls at the Órzola dock, due to the precariousness to which they have subjected the State Security Forces and Corps, which do not have sufficient resources to deal with this health contingency.” “We would like to know if the Canary Islands plans to send agents from the Autonomous Police to Lanzarote in order to be consistent with the restrictive policy they have imposed for Holy Week,” asks Betancort, who assures that “the presence and service of the Teguise Local Police will be intensified from Wednesday, March 31 to Sunday, April 4.”
