Assuming that the title of the article leads one to think of citizen submission, I begin by clarifying that I am referring to the more than worrying submission of a Popular Party of Lanzarote (PPL) that manifests itself again and again incapable of minimally defending the interests of the many citizens who voted for them in the past local and general elections, and three quarters of the same could be said of the PP.
The PPL's passionate defense of the oil project, which is rejected by the vast majority of Lanzarote society and all of its 8 local administrations - paradoxically, including the two town councils in which they govern - is nothing new, and the PPL turns its back on them due to the lack of courage that their political affiliation colleagues in Valencia or the Balearic Islands have had, all due to pure submission to the directives of their president and Minister of Industry and Tourism, Mr. Soria.
More recently, there is the regrettable submission of the PPL in the staunch defense of the benefits for Lanzarote and the Canary Islands of the General State Budgets in 2014, described by the island president of the PP as "the best in history for Lanzarote and the Canary Islands", despite the enormous cuts to this community, and not expressly contemplating a single euro of investment for the island that he claims to represent, arguing instead an enormous investment effort by the Ministry of Development of 17 million euros in the Port of Arrecife, when in reality it is an investment financed entirely with funds from the Port Authority of Las Palmas (AP) and European funds at 50%, without the Ministry complementing it with a single euro, as requested and explained on numerous occasions by the president of the AP, Mr. Luis Ibarra. They know it, but they continue to lie, stubbornly without even blushing at so much budgetary drought and so much knowingly lying.
But the last and, obviously, most worrying of these shameful episodes of submission of the PPL has to do with the abuse that the elimination of the mandatory stopover in La Palma, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote of the Península-Canarias maritime line subsidized by the State represents for the Canarians. And it is that although I must admit that at first the senator for Lanzarote was up to what we expect from someone who should represent our interests - and I honestly believe that he acted from conviction - the truth is that he must have been called to order and close ranks with that decision of the national PP because, our joy in a well, now it turns out that for the senator and the Lanzarote PP, those of us who raise our voices are alarmists and the consequences would no longer be so dramatic because "we still have the service until March", they say, and also "we have guaranteed the connection with the peninsula because an operator maintains a connection with Huelva", a voluntary connection that could be eliminated tomorrow, if the operator freely decided so.
I can only describe as painful the PP of the Canary Islands in general and the PP of the islands in particular. Here the only reality is that the central government of the PP, in order to make the tender that was deserted in its day more attractive to the operators, has decided on the one hand to increase the amount of the subsidy to be granted, and on the other hand to eliminate from the specifications the obligation to make a stopover in these three islands. Everything else is a crude attempt to justify the unjustifiable and minimize the effects that would undoubtedly aggravate the double insularity that we suffer. Even the minister allows himself, immediately seconded by the Lanzarote senator, to derive in the Government of the Canary Islands the responsibility of what has been an exclusive decision of his government, in an unprecedented exercise of jurisdictional tightrope walking at the expense of inter-island transport, which only aims to confuse and share responsibility with others for his new aggression against the Canary Islands. That is, with the invaluable, frequent and more than suspicious argumentative alignment of certain business associations, which started like the senator by raising the cry to the heavens, to end up reproducing Soria's messages as they are, "that the Canary Islands pull their weight, if they do, I can assure you that there will be a solution".
In short, it is a late and perfectly portrayed submission, which explains very well why at this point in the 21st century a nationalist force is more necessary than ever to defend in Madrid the interests of this land without ties, and without the duty of submission and obedience that in the Canary Islands hinders the independence of the parties of state scope.
It is true that neither the PSOE nor the PP have ever included these stopovers in the Law as a Public Service Obligation (PSO), and this is at the heart of the matter if we do not want to be at the mercy of the will in the specifications of the different governments. However, that was not an obstacle for, even without that declaration of PSO in the Law, in 2007 the specifications of the tender that covers the current extended contract, included the obligation of some stopovers that now have to be begged again to the PP, when we understood that this issue was finally overcome and understood in Madrid, even if it was centuries late. Something as simple to understand as that land transport is as important in the peninsular territory as maritime transport in the island territories. I don't know why it is that if it is understood when it is another archipelago that is involved, but I would say and I fear that the oil companies also, that in that other archipelago there is not this unbearable submission of the local Popular Party. What do you think?
* Pedro M. San Ginés Gutiérrez, president of the Cabildo de Lanzarote.