The president of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, has called on institutions to strengthen ties, overcome differences and walk hand in hand in the face of a time that is "hard, of crisis, of anguish and pain."
In statements to the media before attending the events for the Hispanic Day, Ángel Víctor Torres said that we are in a "special" year marked by the pandemic, the social and economic crisis, and also the institutional crisis.
Therefore, he believes that just as in the Canary Islands it has been possible to "set aside differences" and achieve a "broad consensus" that resulted in the Reactivation Plan, the same message must be sent to the other institutions in the country.
In addition, Torres has also made a new call for social responsibility to contain the advance of the covid-19 pandemic in the archipelago, because "nothing has been gained," he warned.
In this sense, he stressed that the Government of the Canary Islands has done an "exhaustive" job and has had to make some "very hard" decisions, as happened in the middle of August, when new restrictions were applied.
All of this, according to Torres, has meant that the Canary Islands is in a containment situation, that the accumulated incidence has gradually relaxed and that today it is the most favorable autonomous community in both 7 and 14 days.
In any case, he insisted that we cannot "lower our guard" and, therefore, he has once again appealed to social responsibility: "Nothing has been gained; everything can turn around and we are risking our health and our economy."
The Canarian president has said that these are key days for countries like Germany to make the Canary Islands a recommendable place to travel. In this sense, he highlighted the meeting that the European Commission will hold this Tuesday, where it is expected to approve homogeneous criteria for all Member States when traveling.
At that meeting, the Spanish Government will propose that borders not be closed, that spaces be regionalized, that the Canary Islands have a singularity as an outermost region and that quarantine be answered with tests or PCR.
Likewise, Torres recalled that the Government of the Canary Islands is working with the Government of Spain to create a health security protocol with respect to the countries of origin, although he stressed that the Autonomous Community will continue to defend that there be controls on peninsular tourists.
Ángel Víctor Torres emphasized that everything depends on achieving a winter season "as good as possible", although he warned that it will be necessary to see how the pandemic evolves in the countries of origin. "If they have bad data, we are going to pay for it," he warned.
