The Local Committee of Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-BC) defended in last week's plenary session of the Teguise City Council a proposal aimed at "strengthening the self-government capacity of the island of La Graciosa" through the recovery of the figure of the delegated councilor and the promotion of differentiated management that addresses its uniqueness as the eighth inhabited island of the Canary Islands.
The initiative proposed both the creation of a specific councilorship for La Graciosa as well as the development of decentralized management mechanisms, with the aim of bringing the administration closer to the citizenry and improving the response to the needs of the territory.
The NC-BC councilor in the Teguise City Council, Fernando Jiménez, stressed that “La Graciosa needs direct, permanent, and adapted attention to its reality,” defending that the figure of the delegated councilor would allow “to guarantee specific and close management for the residents of the island.”
For her part, the local secretary of NC-BC in Teguise, Belén Machín, highlighted that this proposal responds to a historical demand, “La Graciosa has institutional recognition that must translate into real self-government tools. We cannot continue managing its affairs as if it were just another nucleus of the municipality.”
Machín added that “the territorial, social, and economic singularity of La Graciosa demands its own decisions and stable institutional presence on the island”, insisting that “the same that we demand for the Canary Islands with respect to the peninsular territory or for the non-capital islands like Lanzarote with respect to the capital islands, is what we demand for La Graciosa, that its singularity and its triple insularity be taken into account”.
From NC-BC they also recalled that, in 2021, under the mayorship of today's President of the Cabildo, Oswaldo Betancort, the municipal plenary already approved requesting the State that, in case the Law of Bases of Local Regime was modified, it would be allowed for the minor local entities to have their own legal personality. This step was key to being able to constitute a decentralized body in La Graciosa.
However, from the Canarian party, they regret that said initiative “has been forgotten due to the neglect of Coalición Canaria both in the Teguise City Council and in the Congress of Deputies, which has prevented progress in a structural solution for the island".
The proposal defended by NC-BC in the plenary session did not go forward after being rejected by the municipal government group, whose mayor argued the impossibility of forcing a councilor to travel daily to La Graciosa. A stance that NC-BC considers “insufficient and lacking political will to respond to a historical demand of the Graciosera citizenry”.
Nevertheless, NC-BC reiterate their "commitment to continue promoting measures that guarantee greater self-government for La Graciosa, betting on a management model closer, effective and in accordance with its differentiated island condition".
