President Sánchez's decision to place Héctor Gómez from Tenerife at the helm of the public company Tourespaña is good news for the primary economic sector in the Canary Islands: A political period is opening up in which the classic promotional strategy of the nationalist governments in the regional Executive and in the Cabildos governed by Coalición Canaria will be questioned by new analyses and new objectives.
Thus, in view of the statements by the head of Tourespaña published by the digital newspaper Canariasahora, quality must prevail over quantity and the increase in spending per person will be a priority objective over the global number of tourists. This is about sustainability. This is about the profitability of resources. This is about survival.
In Lanzarote we have tried, under the socialist presidencies of Enrique Pérez Parrilla and Manuela Armas, through the control of growth rates and the persecution of illegal tourism development.
The PSOE has also maintained firm positions of rejection to the transfer for expansion of the airport, which, behind the alibi of security, the defenders of the more the better have wanted to slip us. And with the denunciation of all those laws and projects that, far from protecting our territory, unique in the world, intended to transform it into a theme park for visitor consumption.
The origin of the tourism industry on the island, designed by the visionary imagination of César Manrique, was based on a reduced and highly qualified offer. And it was the artist himself who was the first to warn of the certain threat of massification, which would ruin the level of the offer and the prices of the sector, as has happened.
The statements of the new head of tourism promotion of Spain abroad, a Canary Islander with training, experience and sensitivity, open a door to hope for us. Let us trust that future island and autonomous governments share convictions, ideology and values and take the archipelago off the path to vulgarization, deterioration and disrepute.
*Ariagona González, Socialist Councilor of the Cabildo de Lanzarote
