Although I know it will have many interpretations, with this article I only intend to expose the arithmetic truth about what the electoral results of Coalición Canaria in Lanzarote have been in each of the institutions, especially when collated with those obtained in the Cabildo by our political organization and its electoral alliances.
Much has been written and I have heard these days about the electoral results of Coalición Canaria in Lanzarote, in many cases in a malicious key of supposed failure in the island's Cabildo, where the PSOE has certainly won by the minimum - barely 168 votes - mainly as a result of the drag of the national wave of the recent General Elections, despite which we must congratulate them by accepting the democratic result that the polls threw up.
A result whose reading, however, still offers a lot of play, doubly legitimized by the clear reinforcement of citizen confidence that Coalición Canaria obtained in the institution that I still preside over. Not in vain, the Cabildo of Lanzarote has been one of the institutions of the island in which we most increased our electoral results, and the only one together with the Arrecife town hall and the Parliament, which did so both in votes and in percentage. Such is the case, that CC won against the PSOE in the elections to the Cabildo in four of the seven municipalities of the island, including the capital (Arrecife, Tinajo, Teguise and Yaiza). In addition, in two of the three municipalities where we did not reach more votes than our adversaries (Tías and San Bartolomé), Coalición Canaria obtained greater support for the Cabildo than for the aforementioned town halls. Meanwhile, the PSOE only won the elections to the Cabildo in its fiefdom of San Bartolomé, in Tías, where CC only obtained a councilor, and in Haría due to the confluence with the Platform of the Municipality of Haría (PMH).
But let's delve into the arithmetic dissection of these results on the island.
In the first place, and as head of the list, the clearest winner of Coalición Canaria in Lanzarote was the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, who in the regional list obtained no less than 15,855 votes: an increase of almost two thousand votes compared to the sum of the votes of Coalición Canaria to the seven town halls (14,013 votes), approximately 300 votes more than the list for the island constituency headed by Oswaldo Betancort, who also obtained magnificent results - in both cases supported by Lanzarote Avanza (UPY+PIL) - and practically the same as the sum of Coalición Canaria and Lanzarote Avanza to the Cabildo which, had they competed together as to the Parliament of the Canary Islands, and had added a good percentage of the 2,222 votes lost by LAVA to the first island corporation, we would probably now be talking about a very comfortable nationalist victory to the first island corporation. A pity.
In any case, and despite the fact that Coalición Canaria was the first force in Parliament with the support of Lanzarote Avanza in both lists, the truth is that in the local corporations it regressed, either in number of votes or percentage, in all the municipalities of the island except in Arrecife and Cabildo, where we grew in both parameters.
In San Bartolomé, the alliance with the Partido Vecinal para el Progreso (PVPS) also worked and we added their support almost mathematically, while in Tinajo we increased the votes, but we lost in percentage.
For its part, in the Cabildo we grew remarkably both in votes (+2,465), and in percentage going from 23 to 27%.
Of course, nothing that I am going to dissect now detracts an iota from the enormous merit that the second consecutive absolute majority of Coalición Canaria in Teguise had and, much less, to the fifth in Tinajo. Not to mention the spectacular results obtained in Arrecife, especially considering the socialist wave that swept the whole country and to which Lanzarote was no stranger, but let's go to it:
By municipalities, as I said Coalición Canaria only grew in votes and percentage in Arrecife where we have the support of San Borondón (+2,265 votes). In Tinajo, we increased our results by 106 votes although we regressed in 3% of support, and we lost electoral support in votes and percentage in another four municipalities compared to the 2015 elections.
In Teguise, we lost 543 votes, in Yaiza, 280 votes, in Tías, although we went up in votes, it is obvious that we regressed in real support. And in Haría, we only lost 15 votes, but we obtained 3% less votes with respect to the 2015 elections.
On the other hand, in San Bartolomé the integration of the PVPS worked and we remained practically the same as in 2015 -29 votes more than then- although in the previous elections we competed as an electoral coalition and in the current ones we did so as a single political force after the integration of PVPS in Coalición Canaria.
Finally, and returning to the comparative analysis of what was the result of Coalición Canaria to the Cabildo of Lanzarote and to the town halls, it should be noted that except for the anomaly that occurred in Teguise -probably the result of the high percentage of foreign population residing, although this also occurs in Tías or Playa Honda where such anomaly does not occur-, in the majority, the support was greater to the first island corporation than to the town halls and specifically this was the comparative result:
In Arrecife, where Coalición Canaria obtained the most outstanding results (5,311 votes), the support for the Cabildo list was even higher by 117 votes (5,428). In Tías, the results of the Cabildo exceeded by 438 votes those obtained by the town hall (841 compared to 403 votes), in Yaiza we increased by 289 the votes received by the town hall (1,000 compared to 711) and, in San Bartolomé, there were 148 more votes (1,552 compared to 1,404).
A separate analysis deserves the results in Tinajo and Haría where, as usual, the list to the Cabildo receives less support than the municipal one, specifically in 158 and 257 votes less, respectively. Although in the case of Tinajo, that gap was also reduced almost by half in these elections compared to the previous ones, being the municipality where the candidacy to the Cabildo obtained the greatest support in the whole island, specifically 45%. Also Suso Machín was the candidate with more support of how many competed to any institution in Lanzarote by any formation, specifically 49% of support.
Finally, in the case of Teguise, where despite the fact that the gap between Cabildo and Ayuntamiento was also significantly reduced by some 500 votes -as a result of the loss of votes in Teguise, not of the transfer of votes to the Cabildo- the difference is still so surprisingly wide in favor of the municipal list -almost a thousand votes less to the Cabildo (2,680 compared to 3,657)- that the data are worthy of a deep political analysis.
Pedro San Ginés Gutiérrez, acting president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote
