To undertake, innovate, and diversify are very recurrent verbs in the political jargon. The actors of public life, no matter if from the old or the new school, we use them when referring to the actions that administrations must build to improve the economy and everything that walks with it: employment, its quality, and its impact on improving the quality of life of citizens.
The problem appears when these terms remain empty words devoid of content and ideas. Canned phrases that serve the same for those who aspire to win the trust of citizens for the first time, for those who, despite their many attempts, have never achieved it, or for those who have historically held it even without having solved the challenges posed to them. Programmatic words, chained to the slogan, that in the best of cases represent nothing and in the worst no one knows how to carry out.
We must create new ways to amplify those worn-out words. To undertake, for example, means to incentivize, increase, investigate, and, above all, to dream. It is an action of risk and courage. An individual movement that transforms into a choral tide. The public must be present in these processes, because they require incentives from the administration. An administration is needed that accompanies the parents of ideas at the beginning of the road. Arrecife needs entrepreneurs, those who decide to walk a different path than usual to develop. A city with more than 50,000 inhabitants can only move forward hand in hand with its people. The local administration?the closest one? must contribute to this path with specific plans and professional advice. Employers, public law entities, institutions are called to this accompaniment so that the development is sustainable, is based on quality jobs and allows entrepreneurship to generate healthy social fabric.
If we want Arrecife to be a city for coexistence, Arrecife must be a city of commerce. Leisure, large surfaces and small industries must find positive balances, but above all, at this time, the great wealth of a capital is the small and medium specialized commerce. Arrecife must be a large open commercial area that extends from the neighborhoods to the center and from the center to the neighborhoods. A great commercial city in which walking, seeing, comparing prices and products are also an incentive. A city that develops concrete measures of uninterrupted commercial revitalization for the different areas, a city that promotes the specialization of small commerce by sectors and geographical areas. A city that develops integral and not punctual strategies. A city whose business card is also a friendly, close commerce surrounded by other complementary services that make it attractive to citizens.
Arrecife must facilitate, and not prevent, the access of residents and visitors to the shops of the city. The development of a contemporary Mobility Plan, based on useful, well-sized, circular and free public transport, which integrates the neighborhoods into the city. A Plan with pedestrianizations thought out and agreed upon from ambition, that facilitate the citizen presence in the streets and the transit of minors and elders. And with an avenue open again to traffic.
We must promote the leisure areas and persevere in the care of the gastronomy for our neighbors: these are genuine and identity areas of our city, which should serve as a meeting point but also as a pole of attraction for commerce and employment in the Capital. Arrecife needs a gastronomic guide that can guide not only our visitors but also the thousands of citizens who consume the Island's products in the City every day.
We must seek the creation of new gastronomic areas without abandoning those that, like El Charco, have developed a tourist and residential potential in the Capital on the initiative of their entrepreneurs.
The local administration must promote the synergies and the associationism of the commercial sector so that the municipal policies in the matter are developed, hand in hand. The City Council must stop being an administration that mistakes its decisions to become an administration that serves as a channel for the best decisions to be made in each matter. It is about building the professional criteria that improve the offer to the client and the feeling of satisfaction of those who «consume Arrecife».
Arrecife must promote innovation and lead the implementation of technology in the tourism industry. We must generate the confluence of our 50 years of experience in the sector and facilitate training in technological and innovative matters. Only in this way can a professional fabric be born that aspires to export to the world a way of understanding the industry in which we have been pioneers. FERMINA and ESPACIO48 will only be the meeting point of that talent at the service of development understood in the manner of Lanzarote, from sustainability and excellence. Places to share experiences, address technological challenges or receive information and training from the best professionals and experts in each subject.
Let's do it. Let's promote with concrete actions and policies entrepreneurship and innovation, diversify the economic sectors and lead specific differentiated sectors from the Canary Islands to Europe. Let's do it, let's boost the economy to improve the quality of life of our neighbors.
LANZAROTICEMOS ARRECIFE
Echedey Eugenio, Candidate of Coalición Canaria to the Mayoralty of Arrecife