On March 8, and for the first time in the history of democracy, all the sports entities of Arrecife gathered in front of the Town Hall to demand that the municipal government pay the pending sports subsidies for the 2016-2017 season.
Given the lack of response from the socialist government of Eva de Anta, this weekend, and also for the first time in history, the grassroots sport of Arrecife has decided to stand up and not play any game in protest at the totally unjustified inaction of the town hall. The situation that the clubs are going through has become truly unsustainable and only from this perspective of authentic need can we understand that the great family of sport in the city has agreed to hang up their boots for two days.
We are talking about the breach by the PSOE-PIL government in something as essential as the payment of aid that is essential for clubs to continue with the activity they carry out with our children and young people. Cadets, children, alevines, benjamines and prebenjamines will not touch the ball or step on the grass this weekend to protest this negligence and in defense of the survival of grassroots sport which, let's not forget, moves hundreds of boys and girls in the municipality.
Without a doubt, I think they will be sad days for Arrecife and for all those of us who understand the work of the clubs even beyond sports practice, as a true social work. How can we not see it that way in the third capital of the Canary Islands in which sport acts as another tool to support and include the most vulnerable groups of young people! It is gratifying to see how sports schools provide young people with a first contact with this great world, how personal and social values are imprinted, how they manage to forget for a few hours the new technologies that absorb them in a majority way, even slowing down interaction and social development in many cases.
Well, despite this, in Arrecife, in the third capital of the Canary Islands, we find a government that, instead of maximizing the potential of clubs and sports schools, has gradually cut their wings, puncturing the oxygen balloon that these represent economic aid in the daily work they have been developing for years. Players, coordinators, management, coaches, monitors, masseurs, physiotherapists,... all of them are victims of this government.
Now it is sport, but it is still a "more and more" in the long list of absurdities caused by the misgovernment of the PSOE that from the beginning of this mandate was aimless, without enthusiasm, without desire and, worst of all, with zero capacity to manage public affairs.
This weekend, the soccer fields, basketball courts, handball, futsal and wrestling grounds will turn off the scoreboards because sport in Arrecife is in mourning.
By Jacobo Medina, PP councilor in the Arrecife City Council
