In Lanzarote, there is an administrative silence that grows heavier each day. A silence that is not accidental, but profoundly calculated. I am referring to the treatment that the Insular Council of Lanzarote, the Management of Health Services, and the Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands are dispensing to the Insular Hospital of Lanzarote, "the People's Hospital," a state-level geriatric center whose care excellence they wish to dilute, if not make disappear, under political decisions that no one dares to defend publicly.
Barely a year ago, Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista warned of a plan as improvised as it was damaging: to close the Insular Hospital and transfer the elderly and workers to the emerging diseases building opposite the Dr. Molina Orosa Hospital, an infrastructure that is neither designed nor equipped for the needs of geriatric care. What is currently a complete, specialized hospital with a track record, trained staff, and a proven care model, they intend to turn into just another ward within the General Hospital. Just another ward. As if geriatrics were an appendix, an accessory, a filler.
The official excuse at the time was that the Insular Hospital building was suffering structural damage. However, it is enough to review the public budgets of the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands to verify the inconsistency, not to say the *spark* or lie. Not a single euro allocated for the remodeling or rehabilitation of the area affected by the basement columns. Not in the budgets of the current year, nor in those of the next year 2026. Zero euros, absolute nothingness. How is it possible to justify a closure for technical reasons when they do not allocate even the minimum necessary to resolve them? The answer is simple: because the intention is not to fix the Insular Hospital, but to dismantle it and speculate with the land.
And here enters an even more disturbing element. According to everything that emerges from the decisions made, it seems evident that the objective of both the Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands and the Island Council of Lanzarote, both governed by CC, is to remove all patients and professionals from the Insular Hospital, to empty it, to leave it lifeless, and to allow it to die from abandonment. Because an empty hospital is a dispensable hospital. And a building declared unusable is a building susceptible to being recovered by the Island Council for other purposes, specifically, and this is already hinted at between the lines, to turn the land and the building into a publicly funded healthcare center in agreement with a private company. It would be, in short, to transform the public and historical heritage of all the people of Lanzarote into a business and political gain by the most right-wing CC. And to do so at the cost of erasing with a stroke of the pen not only a hospital, but 75 years of Lanzarotean history and identity
Amidst this strategy of eroding the public sector, or as we say in this land, “sneaky-like,” comes the 75th Anniversary of the Insular Hospital. An anniversary that should have served to recognize its history, its work, and its legacy on the island. The institutional response was pathetic, a photo with a cake and candles in the courtyard. An improvised postcard, almost a mockery, which demonstrates the true value they place on a center that has been a home, a refuge, and dignified care for thousands of Lanzarote seniors in almost a century of history. Pablo Eguia, Oswaldo Betancort, Marciano Acuña, and Erasmo García, weren't you ashamed?
The contrast becomes insulting when one observes the propagandistic display for the 35th anniversary of the Molina Orosa Hospital: official events, tributes, grandiloquent staging at the Jameos del Agua, speeches, and institutional self-satisfaction. Two anniversaries, two hospitals, and two yardsticks that highlight the political direction: emptying the Insular Hospital of social and popular legitimacy on its 75th birthday. What is not seen, is not wanted. And what is not wanted, is not claimed as one's ownBut what is at stake is not a building, but a model of healthcare. It is not a budgetary issue, because there is no will to invest. It is not a technical debate, because the decisions are not based on real reports. What there is is a profound contempt for a hospital that does not fit into the political plans of an increasingly extremist right-wing against public services, a contempt for its professionals and, most seriously, for the elderly who depend on itLanzarote's society cannot allow this loss. It cannot accept that a geriatric hospital of state excellence be reduced to a marginal ward. It cannot agree while a public service that works, that is necessary, and that has proven to be up to the task for decades is dilutedI, as a deputy, nurse, and resident of Lanzarote, will remain vigilant and try with all my might to prevent the Insular Hospital, *"the People's Hospital,"* from being left to die.Public institutions can continue taking photos with cakes and candles. But citizens have memory. And history does too
Yoné Caraballo Medina is a deputy in the Parliament of the Canary Islands and insular president of Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista of Lanzarote and La Graciosa.