I hadn't sat down to write calmly since the local and regional elections last year. The speed of events and the municipal public management, where a year seems like a month, don't leave much time to try to reflect and think about how the political context is, especially the nationalist space.
It is obvious to everyone that the formation to which I belong, Nueva Canarias, achieved an unusual milestone, dislodging Coalición Canaria from the Government of the Canary Islands and promoting a government change with a markedly progressive profile. We did it because we believed that it was necessary to oxygenate politics and a new vision of how to do and understand public affairs. Not only in the scope of the Autonomous Community, but also in town councils and island councils, NC was decisive in establishing new projects with the capacity for change, orienting its agendas and agreements towards the pursuit of greater social welfare for our people. At the same time, embracing the challenges that this society faces in these times: climate change, gender equality, political democratization or public integrity, among many others as a consequence of the pandemic that plagues us.
For these purposes, NC, also in Lanzarote where we govern in the capital Arrecife, is in numerous Public Administrations, incorporating a self-centered and Canarian nationalist perspective, where the demand and defense of the interests of the Canarians is above any other consideration. For this reason, when we had the opportunity to reach agreements with CC-PNC to go together in the general elections of November 10, we did not hesitate and sought the space for understanding, aware even that many sectors would criticize it. An agreement that proved to be good when the colleague Pedro Quevedo obtained his seat as a deputy, where every week, together with Ana Oramas, they duel against a Spanish Parliament that on many occasions is incapable of understanding and attending to the Canary Islands.
This alliance is an example that NC, although it has dislodged CC-PNC from the Canarian institutions, does not conceive political action as friend-enemy. I have always considered that in this of politics the friend-enemy dichotomies are a bad thing, and they never come to fruition. Adversaries perhaps? Political competition, substantial to the very democracy of parties, leads on countless occasions to polemicize, discuss and even discredit opposing discourses. But politics is also understanding, common space and agreement. Politics, and even more so in these tense times, cannot be understood as a Roman circus where everyone is directed to survive above all and everyone. I, personally, do not understand it that way, and I try to exercise in each plenary session, motion, or conversation that I have with the opposition in the Arrecife City Council a cordial and open tone. Even enduring some disproportionate criticism that I understand goes in the role of the opposition.
An agreement requires a degree of trust that must be worked on day by day. Trust is earned, it does not come by divine will. NC and CC have long distrusted each other. The vision of where the public policies of our community should be directed was and, in some issues, still is, opposite, and it is obvious to everyone that we have been very critical and distrustful of the last executive of CC-PNC presided over by Fernando Clavijo. Neoliberal and conservative policies that have nothing to do with the policies that NC defends.
However, I am aware, from the data that they are offering us every day, that the future that lies ahead for our land is discouraging. Poverty and unemployment indicators will increase if we do not articulate urgent measures aimed at the most vulnerable social strata. For now, we have achieved an excellent agreement within the framework of the European Union, where the Vice President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Román Rodríguez, in his capacity as Minister of Finance and European Affairs of the Government of the Canary Islands, has negotiated within the framework of the Outermost Regions that the singularities and differential facts of the Canary archipelago are taken care of, a territory that must have exclusive and particular policies. Here is a clear example of defense of the Canary Islands from a nationalist perspective.
However, when I hear about the unity of nationalism, as declared a few days ago by the secretary of the CC committee in Yaiza, Mateo Ramón, it generates conflicting feelings. On the one hand, doubt, considering that the ideas, the project, and the policies defended in CC-PNC do not correspond with those that my organization defends. On the other hand, opportunity. Opportunity to build a strong nationalism that generates public policies that transform the Canary Islands without the need for tutelage. No one disputes that our islands need nationalist parties, since we are the only ones who make decisions by and for the Canarians.
Therefore, I believe that the first thing we should talk about is building trust. And this translates into a project. A clear project, nationalist of course, but that has the capacity to generate the greatest social welfare to our people, from the local to the autonomous and for 20 or 30 years. Without that capacity to build trust, of the ideological foundations, we cannot talk about a future powerful and winning Canarian nationalist party. That is the task: trust.
Armando Santana.