Lanzarote, from the periphery to the center.

March 17 2019 (21:18 WET)

The candidate of the Canarian Coalition for the Presidency of the Government of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, constantly refers in his public speeches to Lanzarote as an "peripheral island", a term that automatically implies, by opposition, the existence of a center, and being in this case not only geographical, but also political. Thus, for Clavijo and the Canarian Coalition, the people of Lanzarote and La Graciosa are the margins of a Canary Islands centralized in two heads: Gran Canaria and Tenerife.

And I say that it is not only a geographical reference because there is more than contrasted data that asserts that Lanzarote and La Graciosa are the outskirts of the Canary Islands for the Canarian Coalition.

Without going any further, the Autonomous Budgets of this same year 2019 left Lanzarote in last place among the Non-Capital Islands in investment per inhabitant, with 497.71 euros. The really tragic thing is that, despite this fact and harming our island, four of the parliamentarians who supposedly represent the people of Lanzarote voted in favor of the document, putting obedience to their mandates from Madrid, Las Palmas or Santa Cruz before the interests of Lanzarote and La Graciosa: the three from the Canarian Coalition: Migdalia Machín, Marciano Acuña and David de la Hoz, and the deputy from the Popular Party: Astrid Pérez.


Unfortunately, for Lanzarote and La Graciosa, this low budget allocation in 2019 is nothing more than a constant since the Canarian Coalition governs the Autonomous Community. And it is that Lanzarote, and this is an overwhelming fact, is the Non-Capital Island with the lowest per capita investment from 2001 to 2018, with only 356 euros on average for each Lanzarote resident, being mistreated in basic services such as education, infrastructure, employment and health.

Therefore, there are many reasons to understand that Lanzarote has a role, as Clavijo says, "peripheral", almost accessory, in which he assumes the role of stone guest at a banquet in which Gran Canaria and Tenerife put on their boots, and in which from time to time it is up to some island to sit at the table, as in this legislature to La Gomera, but in which Lanzarote and La Graciosa always lose out

This system is tremendously perverse for the interests of the people of Lanzarote, and it has to end. We cannot allow the same people to govern for the same people for more than 25 years, win or lose the elections, and we must not allow the centralist steamroller of the Canarian Coalition to continue putting Lanzarote on the margins of our own land: the Canary Archipelago. Faced with the Canary Islands of Clavijo and the Coalition in which only Gran Canaria and Tenerife fit, our project for more balanced islands, with power distributed more equitably, and in which Lanzarote and the people of Lanzarote have a voice solid and autonomous enough to go from receiving crumbs to obtaining what we deserve. Lanzarote and La Graciosa cannot continue to be the periphery of anything and anyone.

 

By Borja Rubio, candidate for Lanzarote to the Parliament of the Canary Islands for Somos Lanzarote-Nueva Canarias. 

 

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