Every time it rains heavily in Arrecife, the scene repeats itself: flooded streets, concerned residents and workers deploying sandbags against the clock. It is an image that is already part of our reality, but it should not be part of our future.
Sandbags represent a way of acting that arrives late, that responds to the emergency, but does not solve the problem. They are the symbol of a policy of improvisation, of an urban model that has not known how to adapt to the climatic challenges that are already here. And the truth is that Arrecife cannot afford to continue functioning like this.
We cannot continue facing the problems of the 21st century with emergency plans typical of the 19th century. Persisting in improvised and temporary solutions is not only ineffective, but also demonstrates a lack of ambition when it comes to protecting our city and our neighbors.
From Nueva Canarias-Canarist Bloc we believe that the time has come to take a step forward and bet on a deep transformation: convert Arrecife into a sponge city.
This concept, which is already being successfully applied in many cities around the world, starts from a simple idea: instead of fighting against water, we must learn to integrate it into urban design. A sponge city is capable of absorbing, storing, and reusing rainwater, thus reducing the risk of floods and taking advantage of an increasingly valuable resource.
And we are not talking about theory, but about realities that are already working. In Copenhagen, after severe floods, more than 300 projects have been developed that include streets that channel water, floodable parks, and urban spaces designed to retain intense rainfall. In Rotterdam, public squares are transformed into temporary water reservoirs during storms, combining leisure and hydraulic safety. In cities like Wuhan or Shenzhen, in China, networks of parks, wetlands, and permeable pavements have been created capable of absorbing a large part of urban precipitation, significantly reducing floods.
Even other cities like Berlin have opted for years for green roofs and permeable surfaces, integrating nature and urbanism to improve resilience against water. And in places as diverse as Singapore or Melbourne, intelligent rainwater management already forms part of everyday urban design.
How does this translate into practice for Arrecife? In concrete and realistic measures: pavements that allow water to filter instead of rejecting it, gardens designed to collect and channel rain, parks prepared to flood in a controlled manner, green roofs that retain water and systems that allow its reuse.
We are not talking about futuristic ideas, but about solutions that already exist, that work and that can perfectly adapt to a city like ours. Return to the Lanzarotean water culture, where the residents on the island worried about storing rainwater, aware of the extreme necessity of a dry and arid island.
Today, with all the technology at our disposal, Lanzarote remains in the 19th century in terms of emergency plans and in the 20th century in energy generation, since we continue to depend 90 percent on oil and fuel oil to desalinate the water we consume. A situation of extreme vulnerability both to climatic phenomena that are already becoming more frequent and to the international economic context and war crises that exponentially increase fuel prices.
We know that a change like the one I propose does not happen overnight. It requires planning, investment, and political will. But we also know that continuing as we are has a much greater cost: material damages, insecurity for residents, and a constant feeling of vulnerability every time the sky darkens.
Arrecife deserves to leave behind improvised solutions. It deserves to anticipate, innovate and become a benchmark in climate adaptation. We cannot continue patching when what we need is a new model.
The sandbags must pass into history. It is time to bet on a city that does not fear water, but rather understands it and takes advantage of it.
And the sooner we start, the sooner we will stop living dependent on the next storm.
