When we chose these words as one of our electoral headers, we did so because they defined part of our City project, we did so convinced of the need for its meaning to become a reality for the Capital of Lanzarote.
We said, and we maintain, that our Capital urgently needs spaces for the promotion and enjoyment of culture and history. Turning our city into an attractive and cultural reference for our people, and also for those who visit us, was a challenge almost as complicated as necessary. Create a cultural offer to highlight our cultural and historical heritage and put our beloved port city on the map of cultural tourism.
I refuse to see culture or our identity as a simple profit and loss account and it must be our obligation as public managers to value it and make it available to our neighbors. Providing Arrecife with an attractive cultural program for residents and visitors should be accompanied by the improvement and creation of new infrastructures that serve as a meeting space as well as engines and dynamizers of an incipient cultural and leisure industry.
Since 2011, we have been committed to reopening the Agustín de la Hoz House of Culture, improving the Castle of San Gabriel or locating an exhibition space in the old Casa Cabildo that could accommodate a multitude of genres and disciplines for locals and strangers.
This work continued in 2015, when we insisted on locating the archaeological museum of Lanzarote in Arrecife, we located part of the work of an internationally recognized artist on our coastline and we left the conversion of the Islote de la Fermina into a meeting space for culture, tourism, sports and technology.
I cannot understand this PSOE that speaks of numbers or "spending" or a PP that looks indifferently the other way while they condemn our City again to be outside the essence that we have as an Island and that, as Manrique himself said, goes beyond his great work.
One day I dreamed of a Cultural Arrecife, a Capital that would value its culture as a flagship of which the people of Arrecife could feel even more proud. An Arrecife with a museum network and cultural points that could also be offered as a tourist product so that, those who visit us, from the main gateway to our City could buy a global bonus that without noticing it will force them to walk through our City and get to know our commerce. A network that included the Casa Amarilla, the Archaeological Museum, the Agustín de la Hoz House of Culture, the Castle of San Gabriel and the Islote de la Fermina. Transform Arrecife into a great museum of museums that fills our streets and shops with tourists and people who generate economy and movement in our small businesses.
But that dream was broken, it was broken by the PSOE of the Cabildo worried only about the municipalities that give it electoral profit and erase the nationalist footprint of our City, it was broken by a New Canary Islands unconcerned about our people and it was broken by the PP of Astrid Pérez Batista worried only about not raising her voice too much so that they do not touch her seat in the Mayor's Office.
The PSOE of Culture and the PP that came to activate Arrecife once again decide against the people of Arrecife and their interests. I see with resignation how, once again, the City Project that set among its main ideas that of "Arrecife is Culture" and that received the majority support of the citizens of the Capital is once again pending for, who knows what dark interests.
Like every nightmare, fortunately this one has also had a light of hope these days, a glimpse of common sense that we have been able to hear in the street and see in the media and networks from those who ARE concerned about recovering and activating Arrecife. Fortunately, there are many who, and have shown it these days, believe that Arrecife is Culture. To all of them THANK YOU FOR RAISING YOUR VOICE.
Echedey Eugenio, a firm believer that ARRECIFE IS CULTURE despite its governments.