In Lanzarote, many goodbyes begin before even packing a suitcase. They are not born at the airport or the port, but at the moment a young person finishes high school, looks towards their future, and understands that, to pursue it, they will have to leave the island.
Each year, hundreds of young people from Lanzarote pack their bags with a mixture of excitement, fear, and sadness. They don't leave out of whim or a desire to abandon their homeland. They leave because they want to train, specialize, and access opportunities that, in many cases, Lanzarote cannot yet offer them.
The data confirm it. According to the survey by the Data Center of the Cabildo of Lanzarote on students studying outside the island in the 2024/2025 academic year, nearly 2,000 young people from Lanzarote are studying away. Of these, 58.2% study in the Peninsula, 25% in Tenerife, 15% in Gran Canaria, and around 1% abroad. More than 80% are enrolled in university degrees.
Behind those figures there are real names, families, and stories. There are mothers and fathers who say goodbye to their children with a smile that hides worry. There are rooms that are left empty too soon. There are friends who promise to see each other at Christmas and summers that never last long enough. Because going away to study is not just changing cities: it is growing up suddenly.
Leaving means learning to live away from home when you still need the warmth of your loved ones. It means missing birthdays, family Sundays, town festivals, and everyday moments that are only valued when they are gone. It means calling by video call to feel close and answering "everything's fine" even when it's not.
It also represents a huge economic effort. Studying away from home is not only emotionally costly. According to that same survey, the average expenditure per student amounts to 9,416 euros per year, a figure that rises to 10,447 euros for those who move to the Peninsula. Rent, transportation, food, tuition, academic materials, and flights turn the right to study into a race against obstacles for many families from Lanzarote.
And, even so, young people keep leaving. Because they know that training is advancing. Because they want to return as doctors, journalists, teachers, engineers, architects, researchers or entrepreneurs capable of contributing to the land that saw them grow.
But returning is not always easy. The problem does not end when the race ends. Many young people who go abroad to study later discover that returning is also difficult. The lack of job opportunities in certain sectors, the scarce economic diversification, and precariousness make what started as a temporary solution end up becoming an indefinite departure.
In fact, although 59% of students assure that they want to return to Lanzarote upon finishing their studies, 27% do not know if they will be able to do so and 13% already state that they have no intention of returning. That is to say, one out of every eight young people who go to study away from home assumes that their future will be far from home.
And that should worry us all.
Because when Lanzarote loses young people, it doesn't just lose population. It loses talent, ideas, energy, innovation, and future. It loses a prepared generation that wants to contribute, but often doesn't find space to do so. It loses those who could diversify the economy, strengthen essential services, and build a more sustainable and competitive island.
Lanzarote cannot resign itself to being a place from which one leaves to prosper and to which one only returns for holidays. It cannot normalize that studying away is almost obligatory nor that returning is a privilege reserved for a few.
It is necessary to expand training offerings, support those who study far away, facilitate access to housing, promote qualified employment, and truly bet on new sectors. It is necessary to understand that investing in youth is not an expense: it is guaranteeing the future of the island.
Those of us who leave do not want to leave forever. We want to have the option to return. We want to be able to develop here that for which we have prepared ourselves. We want to build our lives without feeling that to fulfill our dreams we have to give up our roots.
Because Lanzarote should not expel its young people.
It should be the place that is always worth returning to.