Nueva Canarias Lanzarote has restructured its organization with six Island Secretariats and new organizational positions and has also confirmed its break with Somos Lanzarote, with whom it ran in the last local elections. "The relationship with what may be left of Somos Lanzarote is null", they point out from the party, which affirms that this alliance "ended after the elections were held."
It should be remembered that Somos suffered an internal crisis before the last elections and currently has a councilor in Arrecife, where NC headed the joint list, with Armando Santana as a candidate.
Precisely Santana, who is also the island coordinator of Nueva Canarias, will take charge of one of the island secretariats that the party has created, specifically the New Green Deal. In addition, Yoné Caraballo, who had been a Somos candidate in previous elections, joins the party's organizational structure.
“The great impact generated by Covid-19 has caught us with our homework undone. We still suffer serious deficits in health, education and social welfare in Lanzarote, in addition to the fact that we have not initiated a real change in our energy model. We need a great pact for the climate that is linked to quality public services,” says Caraballo, who is a nurse and former trade unionist, and who will serve as island secretary of “State of Welfare” of Nueva Canarias. The objective of this secretariat will be to collect health demands, from the educational sector and social services, in order to transfer them to public positions and institutions.
In addition, a Volunteering secretariat has also been created, whose function is to organize, develop and participate in activities aimed at volunteering in NGOs and associations, strengthening the link between public and political institutions with organized civil society." Miguel Gil will be in charge of it.
For its part, the island secretariat of the New Green Deal, which Armando Santana will lead, focuses on one of the "pillars" of Nueva Canarias, which states that it wants to "highlight it in this new cycle": "The commitment to a change of economic model linked to sustainability and ecology". For the current Councilor for Tourism, Hospitality and Commerce of the Arrecife City Council, “the New Green Deal must be the central core of all the politics that is generated on the island, since we are arriving late to the ecological transformation.”
In its island projection, NC anticipates that it also plans to establish different municipal committees throughout 2021 to bring the new cycle to all the population centers of Lanzarote. “A green, social Canarianism made from the local level,” they point out.
This restructuring, they explain, arises from "an open, participatory and reflective process within the organization", in which "the socio-economic context that Lanzarote and the Canary Islands are going through has been debated". Thus, they point out that "affiliates, supporters and public officials have agreed on the need to strengthen the party from the municipal level, and with a clear conviction of social service and change of economic model."
The formation considers that political parties "must exercise their function of transmitting citizen demands, and not act as watertight compartments for a group of elites." "In a context like the current one, with some 17,048 unemployed people on the island and 19,000 in ERTES, political, governmental and associative activity seems essential to give way to the serious consequences that are being experienced and are coming," says NC.