The construction of the Canary Islands has passed through countless minds and hands. A progressive construction, with errors and successes, but with an incessant effort to respect who we were to be who we are.
Being as I am, a very convinced nationalist, I faithfully believe in a model where we grow based on logic, with specific transformation engines in the islands, without losing sight of the global construction of the Canary Islands.
Starting from the idea that we are Islands and a nation, I conceive the Canary Islands as the sum of eight different realities, with different growth rates, with disparate vulnerabilities and possibilities, but which must have equal opportunities, regardless of their specificity. From here, understanding the Canary Islands as one, what is the Canary Islands concept?
I have always thought that the Canary Islands must be structured efficiently according to geographical, economic and population connotations. Islands with variables more prone to industrial and commercial growth, Islands with virtues for rural or residential tourism, and islands where the engine is traditional tourism.
The synergies of specific growth in the Islands with a view to a global framework must bring us the fruits of a different nationalism, and I do not say different because this is not the correct one, but because in the 21st century, in 2018, the nationalism to which we have to aspire, the Canary Islands that we must look in the eye, is the sum of a changing reality adapted to an era in which we young people will be in charge of defining and differentiating it. Ideology is the mirror of the concept, and in the concept of the Canary Islands in which I believe, is to build a people with equal opportunities, but with specificities that create a modern nation within the European framework.
The Europe of the peoples must be the angular project of the cosmopolitan nationalism in which we must begin to think. It is not about refounding nationalism, it is about adapting it, understanding the scenario and understanding that the Canary Islands are a nation, but also a people, within the European framework.
The tricontinentality must be, therefore, a structuring part of the very concept of the Canary Islands, looking at the Islands, creating a nation, looking at Africa, America and Europe and consolidating the modern Canary Islands and the Canary Islands of the present.
Islands and nation, this is and should be the basis of that idea of our Archipelago in the Tricontinental framework. In the words of Victoriano Ríos, "let's build the future and make it better than the past, even if, to do so, we have to take the reason away from the poets".
David Toledo Niz is the General Secretary of the Nationalist Youth of the Canary Islands
