Defending the model of the Insular Hospital of Lanzarote is not a matter of nostalgia, but of political responsibility and social justice. We are talking about a center that has been a reference in geriatric care in the Canary Islands and throughout the State, with a trajectory that combines assistance, training, and dignity for our elders. It is no coincidence that professionals and citizens consider it a pillar of the public system, nor that there is today a growing mobilization to prevent its dismantling.
The open debate surrounding its future is not technical, it is deeply political. Under the argument of “modernization” or “transfer”, what is happening is a progressive emptying of the hospital. The transfer of geriatric services to Hospital Doctor José Molina Orosa, defended by CC, is presented as an improvement, but in practice it implies the loss of identity, autonomy, and capacity of this historic center. Those of us who work for public healthcare know that these processes are rarely neutral, since they begin with transfers, continue with the reduction of services, and end with effective closure.
Against that official narrative from both the Cabildo of Lanzarote, the Government of the Canary Islands, and the spokespersons aligned with power, the reality conveyed by workers, users, and social organizations is a very different one. They denounce that the Insular Hospital model is not only a state reference in geriatrics, but also the only teaching unit for this specialty in the Canary Islands, and warn that its disappearance responds to interests unrelated to public health. A clear risk is even warned of, letting the building and the service fall to open the door to speculative operations or formulas of covert privatization.
We are not facing an isolated case. What is happening in Lanzarote connects with an international trend that questions the public services model. The example of Garrahan Hospital in Buenos Aires is illustrative and should serve as a warning to us.
There, the conflict did not begin with an announced closure, but with a more silent strategy. With the arrival to power of the far-right Javier Milei, a public spending adjustment policy was promoted that directly affected this hospital, a symbol of Argentine public healthcare. Budget cuts, lack of investment, infrastructure deterioration, salary freezes, and staff overload progressively weakened the center. It was not said that the hospital was going to close, but the conditions were being created for it to stop functioning as a reference.
That is the true risk. Not the immediate closure, but the planned emptying.
However, the Garrahan case also demonstrates that this process can be stopped. The response was forceful. Healthcare personnel mobilized, publicly denounced the situation, and managed to transfer the conflict to the entire society. Families, associations, and broad citizen sectors came out in defense of the hospital, turning it into a collective symbol. Social pressure and media visibility raised the political cost for the government, which was forced to stop the accelerated deterioration that could have led to a de facto closure.
It was not a total victory, but a clear lesson, when the citizenry defends its public services, dismantling is not inevitable.
That pattern of weakening the public sector to justify its transformation or substitution, is what we also see today in the Canary Islands. The policies promoted by the Canarian right of Coalición Canaria, in line with the Spanish right, are moving in that direction, progressively reducing the weight of the public sector, opening spaces for outsourcing and converting rights into business opportunities.
The model of the Insular Hospital of Lanzarote represents exactly the opposite of that logic. It represents a model where the care for our elderly is not measured in terms of economic profitability, but of human dignity. It represents territorial cohesion, guaranteeing that a non-capital island has specialized services without always depending on displacements. And it also represents collective memory, generations of professionals and patients who have built a space of care that cannot be replaced by a simple administrative transfer.
Comparing Lanzarote with Buenos Aires is not exaggerated; it is to evidence a reality. There, a healthcare benchmark was close to being lost through attrition. Here we are still in time to avoid that path.
Therefore, defending the continuity of the Insular Hospital model is not an abstract ideological position, it is a political and ethical obligation. We demand its rehabilitation, its maintenance as a public reference center in geriatrics and the guarantee that there will be neither closure nor covert dismantling. That is, financial sheet and return schedule. Because when a public hospital is weakened, not only is a service lost, a right is lost.
And rights, once they are lost, are not easily recovered.
