Talking about sports is undoubtedly talking about its athletes and the people who, in an organized or unorganized way, practice a healthy life; thousands of people who practice sports freely or organized every day as part of their way of life. Without a doubt, our objective of improving the quality of life of the people of Arrecife requires the promotion and support of physical and sports activity and the improvement and creation of infrastructures or spaces aimed at that activity.
Arrecife is a leading municipality in the lack of infrastructure and the abandonment of existing ones almost as much as it is in the percentage of residents who regularly practice any discipline or modality.
The city project that Arrecife needs must specifically have a sports infrastructure plan that studies the needs and demands to define investment priorities. The existing ones are insufficient and neglected. We must think of people as users and spaces as parts of a friendly city concerned about the well-being of its citizens.
When we talk about sports infrastructures, we think of municipal facilities such as pavilions, fields or sports venues, but of course we must not forget, as it is almost as or more important, the need for public and free access facilities. We must have sports spaces that bring healthy practice closer to the neighborhoods, outdoor areas that promote mobility and healthy practice for our elders, outdoor gyms or open facilities for any practice.
The current municipal leaders have forgotten alternative sports and closed the door to new trends for free practice and it should be, precisely, these spaces that promote the change to a healthy and healthy society that shares its leisure time around sports.
Talking about sports facilities for clubs, groups or federated athletes is talking in Arrecife about municipal neglect and inability. The Argana pavilion, the Titerroy pavilion or the facilities of Argana, Las Salinas, San Francisco Javier or Altavista are clear examples of the inability not only for good maintenance but also to allow other administrations to contribute to it.
We will bet on becoming the "Sports Capital of Lanzarote" again and we must work on the creation of a large sports space in the upper area of the city. A ring of sports facilities that collects, for each neighborhood, the needs in sports matters. Municipal investments must be studied and planned, improvisation cannot be the vehicle for decision-making of the City Council. New ambitious facilities but dimensional to the present and future demands of the city and its inhabitants.
Arrecife must have a figure that allows the coordinated and collaborative work of the City Council and sports clubs and associations. The City Council must abandon its supervisory profile to adopt a collaborative criterion with those who support sports in Arrecife selflessly. It must be from his hand that the protagonists of sports in the capital stop being mere spectators to make decisions and grow with the close help of the City Council.
In short, we must aspire to change the operating model of sports and physical activity in Arrecife. We must change the immobility of the current management for the opportunity to become a benchmark municipality that, advised by those who have already done this work in other municipalities of the Canary Islands, starts a project of all and for all. With new and renovated infrastructures, associations and clubs participating in what happens and with a clear policy of promotion and promotion of sport as a healthy lifestyle habit with the sole objective of improving the quality of life of the people of Arrecife.
Let's do it! Let's improve the sport of our Capital as other municipalities of the Island have already done. Let's Lanzarotize Arrecife!
Echedey Eugenio
Candidate of the Canarian Coalition for the Mayoralty of Arrecife
