I am Fernando María Jiménez García, a doctor in the municipality of Teguise for more than 30 years. Specifically 32 years and 10 months, counting my nine months as an interim doctor in La Graciosa from 1986 to 1987. From 1990 I joined the Teguise Health Center as a family doctor.
As you can deduce, a little more than half my life occupied and concerned with the well-being and health of all my patients (an average of 1,500 people), as well as a social activist participating in health and consumer councils, and collaborating in various island media, both radio and television.
All in defense of the users and consumers of Lanzarote and La Graciosa.
Today, I would like to go to a greater commitment: to take care of each and every one of my neighbors in Teguise from the municipal political representation.
I consider myself just another neighbor of this wonderful municipality, who, taking a step forward, has decided to run in the next elections to the Teguise City Council, supported by a great team of women and men who make up Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista.
I believe that another way of doing politics is possible at the local level: more transparent, more participatory, more human, closer and more friendly.
I lead a new candidacy, formed and committed to the politics of care, and that imagines an Island-Home. Aware, because we also suffer it as neighbors, of the many needs that Teguise still presents today.
We are concerned about the deterioration of the historical and heritage center of the Villa de Teguise and the towns that make up the municipality; we are concerned about the lack of cultural and Canarian identity promotion; we are concerned about the conservation of the environment. The cleanliness of our mountains, towns and places of coexistence; we are concerned about the local economy. The primary sector. The jable and the mountains; we are concerned about the sustainable future and the quality of tourism; we are concerned about our young people and elders, their present and their future; and we are concerned about the eighth island, in which direction La Graciosa is going.
From today we will begin to design a municipality that takes care of us. A municipality with realistic strategic lines that build the Teguise of tomorrow. Our task is to kick town to town, knock on every house, visit every corner and talk to each neighbor collecting suggestions and proposals.
To dialogue, to speak with tranquility and calm. And listen. Close to the street, to the people, listening to the concerns of groups, cultural associations, NGOs and public workers. Because they are the true connoisseurs of the reality of Teguise; because we live and suffer its shortcomings in the day to day and, therefore, our program will be a faithful reflection of their needs.
The Canarista Bloc of Nueva Canarias will be composed of neighbors from Teguise and La Graciosa. From the debate and consensus we will contribute ideas and new ways of understanding politics. And, above all, desire. I will not be the youngest candidate; nor the most attractive; nor with more hair. But I will be the candidate with the most desire. I guarantee that.
I can assure you that the women and men who make up this candidacy are eager to achieve projects that improve the well-being of our people. We do not intend to convince you with false expectations, nor will we fill our mouths with empty promises that we can never fulfill. We can only offer you our commitment to work, dedication and effort carrying out an open-door management, with a project of social justice, progress and thought here, in Teguise, Lanzarote, La Graciosa and the Canary Islands.
Our beloved Teguise has to recover its way of being, its traditions and its customs. An orderly municipality, which invites you to visit it because it is the best representation of what we are as people from Lanzarote and the Canary Islands. Recognizing the indigenous past of the Majo people, valuing the European nuances, while looking at the door of the Atlantic Ocean.
We canaristas believe that there is no better way to govern than close to the local, to our people. Without external tutelage. Opening the doors of the town houses for citizens to participate. This will be our way of governing.
We face this challenge with the greatest enthusiasm, with full confidence and the firm purpose of demonstrating that things can be done as God commands.
When we really believe in what we do, we find the means! and who does not want to do anything, finds an excuse!
As a candidate for mayor of Teguise I propose to govern, neither more nor less, in the way I have been practicing my profession. With deep respect for my neighbors and with a clear commitment to well-being and social justice.
I will take care of Teguise, simply because I believe with total sincerity that I am in debt to you for so many pleasant and invaluable teachings and experiences. Sometimes positive (helping in a management, to heal, to heal); others to learn (always relieving and as a last resort consoling, being there and here for the hard and the mature); and others with pain (such as accompanying in the last moments of life).
I commit myself as I committed myself in its day with the local project of the Independent Local Group of Teguise, led by an exceptional person such as Don Esteban Betancort Bonilla, a great teacher from whom I learned and continue to learn every day. An example of Canarianism and public exemplarity.
Today I feel supported by a great team of women and men who see it as necessary, want, have the illusion and the desire, to dedicate the most valuable thing they have, their time, to Teguise, in Teguise, and with all the residents of Teguise.
Because, dear ones, this is not about Fernando Jiménez, it is about the team, about a Canarista Bloc that will occupy a wide space from strict Canarian obedience. That is why, since November 1, All Saints' Day, I joined Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista to be one more of the team with the rights, duties and responsibilities that belonging to a group that gives you the confidence to lead an electoral list requires. What Fernando Jiménez achieves will be achieved by the Canarista Bloc as a whole.
And what is meant by Canarian obedience?
Well, to collect at every moment, in every population center, the voice of the Canarian people (for example, that spokesman who immediately transfers us from the damages, to all kinds of needs); and to promote the legacy (with constant exposure of where we come from, what we are, how we want to leave it to our sons and daughters, and in my case grandchildren).
Because being a Canarianist is to prioritize love and affection for a land that belongs to everyone who gets up every morning to make it better, without outside influences. In short, to decide here what happens here.
And why focus our project on the idea of care?
Because many people have felt disoriented and unrecognized. Neglected in their situation of dependency and loneliness.
Because the current legislation on waste collection deposits has not been respected, which should not be with lids, but with a pedal, with a better closure, so that they do not blow away as happens in so many areas such as Famara.
Because the necessary infrastructures have not been taken care of, such as the bike lane, the teleclubs, the hermitages or the squares, in short, the true palaces of the people.
The change of uralite pipes for the currently approved ones, and instead of removing and putting them, we seek to make alternative projects that shock the neighborhood life as in the case of Tahiche.
Because care is not opening facilities without first ensuring their universal accessibility. Respect the law before all these people with mobility difficulties.
Because care is knowing how to carry and organize an adequate inspection system, in a humanitarian way, collecting complaints and suggestions from neighbors, with a proposal for resolution before 21 days as an arbitration system.
Because care is to improve the bureaucratic framework that prevents so many things due to technical standards that have not demonstrated the effectiveness that is supposed to, and to get projects in greater proportion that involve increased work and the economy, where every entrepreneur is welcomed, supported and with maximum legal certainty to live without fear of building their work and family dream here, in Teguise.
Because care would involve the management of especially delicate areas, such as La Graciosa. We believe in an Eco-Island model for the eighth. But for this we must diagnose its deficiencies well, with a study of the population carrying capacity, tourist flow, the state of public resources, even if this means a more exhaustive and coherent control to guarantee basic services and supplies in relation to water, electricity and communications. Our main objective is the residents, the people of Graciosa. La Graciosa is already of age to be herself, her society, the one that identifies what they want to be in the future.
Because care would involve saving the environment and landscape of the cochineal, avoiding its eradication.
Because a caring attitude means having clear the vocation of PUBLIC SERVICE.
I end by remembering a phrase that I was taught in school. That close teaching that our unitary schools represent:
“Who does not live to serve, is not worth living”.
Fernando Jiménez, candidate for Mayor of Teguise for Nueva Canarias.
