The Popular Party has found a new crack in its support for the surveys. After the public positioning of the mayor of Tías, Pancho Hernández, now it has been the Local Committee of Teguise who has distanced itself from the official position of the PP on the island and has asked for the surveys to be suspended until a consensus is reached.
In the meeting they held last Monday, the popular members of La Villa voted for this initiative, which prospered by majority and with only two votes against. One of those two votes was that of councilor Roger Deing, although the other three PP councilors in Teguise, Jonay Díaz (who in turn is president of the Local Committee), María José Costa and Antonia Suárez, voted asking for the suspension of the surveys.
Although the Local Committee has not yet made this decision public, it has already been transferred to the island bodies of the party, according to La Voz. In fact, a meeting of the Island Executive is already scheduled for this Thursday, where this issue is expected to be discussed.
The decision of the Local Committee of Teguise aggravates the gap opened in the ranks of the Lanzarote PP, which until now had been trying to maintain a unanimous voice in defense of the surveys. A position that contrasted with that of their colleagues in the Balearic Islands, who have publicly demonstrated against carrying out surveys in their archipelago, and even broke the voting discipline in the Senate.
Pancho Hernández, the first to distance himself
In Lanzarote, the first to distance himself from the official position of the party was the mayor of Tías, Pancho Hernández, who a little over a month ago assured on Radio Lanzarote – Onda Cero that he is "against oil exploration". "If because I say this, it means that they don't want to count on me, I have no problem, Pancho is going home to work", he said at the end of April.
At that time, Hernández admitted that there are PP colleagues who are "very concerned" about this issue and about the position of his party supporting oil exploration in Canarian waters. "I freely believe that we have not been able to manage this situation. I believe that, if not at a regional level, at an island level, we could have done the same as the PP Balearic Islands or Valencia, flatly refusing this", he stated.
And it is that the mayor, the only one that the PP has on the island, considers that a place like Lanzarote that lives and has lived from tourism, "has no need to take any risk" with possible oil spills.