After Nueva Canarias voted against raising the Canary flag in the Plenary Session of the Cabildo last Friday in commemoration of Flag Day, the Nationalist Youth of Coalición Canaria in Lanzarote ask the "nationalist" group to "revise its statutes and ideologies." They believe that with this act they have "demonstrated that they are quite far from the Canarian feeling."
"This vote against the feeling of the Canarians, of what our flag represents in commemoration of its day, has nothing to do with what Nueva Canarias supposedly represents, nationalism, or at least that is what they clung to in the last elections," says Sara Bermúdez, spokesperson for the youth formation of Coalición Canaria.
"If there is something that differentiates Canarian culture, it is its respect and openness to different cultures. We know that the flag of the seven green stars is not the official flag, but it is the one that represents the feeling of many Canarians; it reflects a cultural, social, historical and educational legacy that we must not renounce, also symbolizing the capacity of the Canarian people to continue being protagonists of our decisions. And although, as we have said, it is not the official flag of the Canary Islands, we trust that it will be the Canarian flag of the future, reflecting multiculturalism, respect and greater self-government of this land," they defend.
The Nationalist Youth believe that Nueva Canarias "has played with the Canarian flag to sell and buy the feeling of the Canarian people in the last municipal elections, but that its ideology is quite far from what it means to be a nationalist." Thus, they "recommend" that its leaders, although, they say, "we already know that some have been linked to the Spanish right for many years," "sit down and revise their statutes and the line they want to follow, but do not deceive the Canarians by being false nationalists."
