Lanzarote En Pie (LEP) held its candidacy presentation assembly for the 2023 municipal elections to the San Bartolomé City Council. At the event, Jorge Díaz Álvarez was ratified as head of the list for Mayor.
The municipal organization is pleased to have Jorge Díaz for the project in San Bartolomé since “he is a prepared and capable person, knowledgeable about the problems of the municipality in which he has been residing for more than thirty years, and also has experience in the administration. He is a Diploma in Tourism and a Degree in Humanities, professionally he comes from the world of teaching.”
“Jorge has decided to take a step forward and lead our project in San Bartolomé in the next electoral process, heading a list of progress, open to participation and with the will to transform the San Bartolomé City Council into a more empathetic institution and close to the problems of the residents”, they point out from LEP.
The municipal candidate points out that “the current government group of the San Bartolomé City Council has wasted the opportunity to substantially improve the quality of life of the residents, by not adequately managing these four years that they have had of absolute majority and of governments of the same color in the Cabildo and in the Canarian and state governments”.
“The fact that changes are barely perceived and that they have not been able to solve the priority problems of the municipality, with this very favorable situation and taking into account the time they have been governing, does not speak very well of their management capacity”, says Díaz.
The island coordinator of Lanzarote En Pie, Leticia Padilla, pointed out that this candidacy is presented as “a breath of fresh air for an institution that needs to be ventilated, to seek creative solutions to entrenched problems, placing on the table the issues that affect the neighbors, such as access to housing, the maintenance of public spaces, the care of the elderly, cultural and youth revitalization, the need to diversify and qualify the municipality's economy, animal welfare, the defense of the environment or the solution of problems such as mobility”.
Bringing the City Council Closer
Jorge Díaz is clear that each population center of San Bartolomé has its own idiosyncrasy and that it is essential to bring the institution closer to the residents of each of them, although special emphasis must be placed on the most populated nucleus of the municipality. In this sense, the candidate maintains that “Playa Honda deserves that we make an effort to improve municipal services and facilities in this town, for example, in terms of citizen security, or in attention to our elders and young people.”
One of the objectives for Lanzarote En Pie in San Bartolomé is "the defense of the territory and our heritage, especially in regards to protected areas such as the Special Conservation Zone of the “Guacimeta seagrass beds” that covers the entire municipal coastline or the Jable passage area”. For the municipalists it is urgent to resume citizen participation processes that allow the population to be heard in the face of possible threats to the environment such as the “marine cages” or the new road that they intend to build above the industrial area and that is already in the bidding process.
They also consider it necessary to respond to the problem of mobility. “This past legislature, the drafting of a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan for Playa Honda was commissioned, paid for with public money, which remained in a drawer, it is not very well known why”, says Díaz. In this case, Lanzarote En Pie proposes that the Mobility Plan cover the entire municipality and address, among other points, the traffic problems in Playa Honda and San Bartolomé, the problem of access and exits from Playa Honda, pedestrian access from the residential area to the commercial-industrial area, public transport between the different nuclei of the municipality, as well as the universal accessibility of the municipality.
Another of the axes on which the participatory process they propose pivots is animal welfare. From the team that accompanies Jorge Díaz, it is argued that San Bartolomé needs an animal and environmental protection unit in the Local Police, a collection service that comes when called, regular sterilization campaigns and implantation of chips for domestic dogs and cats and take care and worry about the situation of feral cats in the municipality.
Likewise, the Lanzarote En Pie candidate maintains that the economy of San Bartolomé has a lot of untapped potential. We must value our cultural, architectural and ethnographic heritage and make it known to visitors who come to our municipality, as well as make local products and producers and our hospitality visible, thus promoting enogastronomic tourism.
“We have been meeting with neighbors for some time now, who, through their concerns and proposals, help us build a program open to participation and realistic, helping us define the strategic lines for our municipality”, concludes Jorge Díaz.