The "Orange Tide" of Ciudadanos walks the streets of Arrecife

PHOTOS: Sergio Betancort.

Candidates and members of Ciudadanos took to the streets of Arrecife this Saturday. Dressed in orange shirts characteristic of the party and with the logo of the formation, the heads of the list to the Cabildo and the Parliament of the Canary Islands toured the capital. "Our priority today, as it has been in recent months, is to listen to the real needs of ordinary citizens of the island," said Nereida Cañado, candidate for the Regional Chamber.

Ciudadanos Lanzarote has stated that it wants to "break the belief that in order to participate in politics and become known, money is needed to organize very expensive campaigns and events, and that only those who have access to subsidies or financing godfathers have money." Faced with this, "Ciudadanos Lanzarote, with a very limited budget and as part of a party that at the level of Spain and the Canary Islands proposes a reduction and limitation of subsidies and donations to political parties, is committed to illusion, hope and direct contact in the street and in social networks as the engine of change and regeneration of politics," the formation says in a statement.

Benjamín Perdomo, candidate for the presidency of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, was also among the members of that 'tide'. "People on the street are not looking for miracles or revolutions, they want honesty, work and common sense and that is the basis of the ideology of Ciudadanos, of its sensible change and of what we propose for Lanzarote. All citizens have the same concerns, which in the case of the areas in which the Cabildo and the municipalities have more direct powers are unemployment of 30 percent and without prospects of how to tackle it, deficient social and dependency services and neighborhoods and towns without endowments and in poor urban conditions," said the candidate to lead the Cabildo. 

"Ciudadanos has no obligations except with the citizens"

Perdomo also referred to the traditional parties. In conversation with a group of women from the Valterra neighborhood, the candidate added that "we can only solve the problems of Lanzarote if we attack their root. And a good part of the root of these problems is that the traditional parties prioritize returning the favors owed within their parties or protecting the interests of business groups that support them or subsidizing in a priority way the socio-cultural elites that lend them their name in the campaign." "In Ciudadanos we come with our backpack empty of debts, we have no obligations to anyone except with the citizens and, although it would be very easy for us to promise everything to everyone, our main promises are honesty, transparency, work, management capacity and that everyone's money is not going to be wasted on partisan interests," he said. 

At the end of the day, Nereida Cañado commented, according to the formation in its statement, that one of the conversations that "most marked her" during this event was the one she had with Miguel, an unemployed young man, 29 years old, from the La Vega neighborhood. "People are tired of the sad pre-campaign spectacle of the traditional parties in Lanzarote: works in a hurry throughout the island and municipalities to hide years of neglect, last-minute signings of the 'professional politicians of always', those who have changed parties several times and act as if the votes were their property, the same old promises of every 4 years that no longer have any credibility and parties that talk about agreements and exchanges of positions, councilorships, municipalities and councils before citizens have manifested themselves with their vote," they point out from the party. "The first objective of Ciudadanos must be to change the way of doing politics in Lanzarote. We have to put citizens and their real needs back at the center of island politics," Cañado stressed for her part.