The Councilor of Nueva Canarias - Canarista Bloc (NC-BC) in the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Daisy Villalba, defended last Friday the amendment to the entirety of the island budgets, proposed by Coalición Canaria and the Partido Popular, and the amendments to the entirety and partial amendments of the opposition groups. Thus, the Canarista assures that she was the only one of the 23 representatives who rejected "all the amendments" of Vox for "ideological reasons and professional ethics."
Villalba insisted that the island accounts “continue with a model of charity and subsidies that externalizes the public responsibility of the Cabildo to third parties and cuts social rights, study grants and investments, in addition to not addressing vital issues such as the ecological transition and access to housing.” In this line, this amendment was rejected by the conservative bloc of CC and PP; and the abstention of the PSOE and Councilor Óscar Noda.
In the partial amendments, the Canarista councilor defended a battery of proposals aimed at improving the budget, mostly in social and ecological aspects. Thus, the creation of an Insular Housing Consortium that acts as an intermediary and facilitator in improving the promotion and management of access to housing in Lanzarote stands out, as mandated by article three of the Canary Islands Housing Law; or the promotion of an Energy Community in Arrecife that facilitates access to renewable energies for self-consumption for the population.
Regarding the Third Sector, Councilor Daisy Villalba asked the head of the Social Welfare area, Marciano Acuña, that associations cannot be classified as first and second class, where some are forced to compete in public competition and exhibition while others benefit from nominated subsidies. “Either all or none, and always according to criteria of general interest,” Villalba pointed out, who recalled the “unfair absence of aid from the Social Welfare area to the two island associations that work with children with ASD and their families.”
Similarly, she requested the creation of the Gender Violence Prevention Service, “a fundamental resource for prevention in a context where calls to the Emergency Device for Abused Women of 112 have increased in 2023 by 5% only in Lanzarote.” Both Coalición Canaria, as well as the Partido Popular and Vox, opposed this proposal.
Sanitary cordon to Vox
Thus, when it was time to vote on the partial amendments proposed by the far right, the Canarista councilor requested her right to individual vote to argue the rejection of her political formation to all the amendments proposed by the party led by Santiago Abascal.
“I avail myself of the individual vote because as councilor of NC-bc and for professional ethics I vote against all the amendments presented by a xenophobic and racist party, which goes against human rights as is Vox,” Villalba said in her first intervention.
To this, the councilor of the far right asked her to retract her words, to which Daisy Villalba replied that “I am not going to retract because I am not going against you as a person, but against the ideology of a party that is Vox that in all public institutions ignores gender violence, is against human rights, is against migrants and, above all, has removed rainbow flags and says that people with different sexual orientations are mentally disturbed. For my political ideology and for my professional ethics as a social worker I do not retract before the ideology of your party, not of you as a person.”