This year 2019, which is now ending, has been marked in the Spanish State by a worrying institutional paralysis. No less worrying are the multiple cases of corruption, which continue to bring countless politicians of various colors before the courts.
Parallel to the discrediting of political life, we have witnessed the growth of the Spanish far right, which is trying to make us go backwards in rights and freedoms.
In the international arena, other more subtle forms of coups d'état have appeared, such as the one in Bolivia, or before in Brazil or Venezuela. All of them under the protection of the new forms of imperialism and business of President Trump and his tariff disagreements with China.
In Europe, not only have we not advanced towards a more social Europe, but nationalism and xenophobic far-right reappear, placing immigration in the spotlight of the fears with which they manage politics.
And, meanwhile, the Mediterranean continues to accumulate human corpses of young people who intended to improve their lives by trying to reach the coasts of rich Europe.
The European Union, which has been able to face Brexit in a united way, has nevertheless failed to reach an agreement to fight against climate change.
Both phenomena, Brexit and climate change, will affect the Canary Archipelago, where 35% of our GDP and 40% of employment depend on tourism and where the fragility of our island territory is not prepared to mitigate and adapt to the effects of rising temperatures on the planet.
However, in the Canary Islands, from a political perspective, we are witnessing an important and hopeful change of cycle. After more than a quarter of a century, the groups that make up the Pact of the Flowers (PSOE, Sí Podemos Canarias, NC and ASG) have approved a Canary Islands Budget that has not been drawn up by the Canary Coalition and its PP partners. The same has happened in all the Island councils and in the town halls of the main cities of our islands.
In order to develop the policies committed to the citizens, it is urgent for the Canary Islands that the Government of the State is formed, that there are new budgets that prioritize the social and the public and that the new government complies with what is owed to the Archipelago.
In the words of Javier Pérez Royo, the Spanish political system is paralyzed. Four elections have been held - December 2015, July 2016 and April and November 2019 -; a budget made by Rajoy and Montoro, which is still extended; most of the legislation are decrees of the Government and not legislation emanating from Congress; nor have the constitutional bodies of the State been renewed because they require an impossible qualified majority such as the General Council of the Judiciary or the Ombudsman.
All of them are clear indicators of the constitutional paralysis in which we find ourselves.
Since Rajoy's absolute majority, the PP decided to refrain from seeking dialogue and negotiation to find a reasonable solution to the territorial problem in Catalonia. From politics it was decided to subcontract the Constitutional Court, the Attorney General's Office, the National Court and the Supreme Court to resolve the matter. And everything has gotten worse.
With the aggravating circumstance of the worrying contradictions between European and Spanish jurisprudence regarding Catalan political prisoners. A real fiasco that shows that something has not been done well.
Since November 11, Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Iglesias signed a pre-agreement for a coalition government between the PSOE and Unidas Podemos, the media brunete has not stopped amplifying the interests contrary to this possible Government, where voices from the business community, some military or even intelligence services have been heard that do not accept the results of the popular will and, therefore, do not accept democracy, even threatening to take this future government to court under the excuse that Sánchez is a danger to security.
Some representatives of the PSOE have joined this chorus. We are witnessing, therefore, a degeneration of democracy, where the majority of the media, whether public or private, are behaving as media at the service of the coup, are not fulfilling the social function of the right to information that citizens have, and are clearly positioned on the side of sectors that fear losing some of their eternal privileges, if this coalition government were to be formed.
We are kept hopeful that 2019 has been a year with three important mobilizations: that of pensioners and retirees demanding dignity and protection of pensions; that of women demanding equality and security; that of youth for the climate, demanding that we move from words to deeds and there is room for hope.
Three mobilized sectors, which will continue in 2020, vigilant and demanding, defending the interests of the social majority and serving as a counterweight to the minority sectors, but very noisy, that control the media.
In the Canary Islands and in the Spanish State in 2020 there is room for hope and optimism.
Manuel Marrero Morales
Spokesperson for the Sí Podemos Canarias Parliamentary Group
