If Alejandro Sanz had visited La Graciosa, one of his best-known songs "looking for paradise" would have had another title. It wasn't like that and he was looking for it for a good season.
The eighth island is paradise, yes, and precisely for that reason we have to take care of it and pamper it more, so that it continues to preserve its greatest treasure: being different. However, in recent years I have observed a certain relaxation and the fact that conserving it constitutes a more ambitious challenge than running 8, 20 or 31 kilometers; It is a total challenge that affects present and future generations, an extraordinary natural space and all administrations.
We will be better off if we approve and comply with a new PRUG, called to regulate the activities that take place in it. A question that must come hand in hand with a great agreement between parties, neighbors and affected administrations, with a Cabildo that must lead and a mayor who cannot stand aside. It also breaks the heart that the works are eternalized, such as the unfinished Sociocultural Center of Caleta de Sebo, which has been waiting for years, despite the fact that its poster says "execution period 9 months"; or the necessary sanitation that began as an emergency, but is still waiting for its conclusion. It must be that, as part of Teguise, in La Graciosa also the tenders and executions are an almost impossible mission.
As it is important to assume that we have a problem with cars and act, betting on more sustainability, which involves reducing the vehicle fleet and making it more efficient. What cannot be is to look the other way or put up traffic signs that neither avoid nor hide the problem, but vulgarize the place.
And speaking of mobility, if all roads lead to paradise, these must be taken care of, as well as the Salao bathrooms or the island's signage, which must be exclusive. If the lampposts of San Sebastián are known throughout the world, why not the signage, street furniture or signage of La Graciosa? The opposite is to go backwards in the differentiation of a place that everyone wants to go to because it is different. In this, neither relaxations, nor photos like the one of the old soccer field with the rubble and waste waiting for too long for an answer.
It is time to be ambitious, and even face other issues such as the possibility of implementing a final ecotax that allows us to have resources for the conservation of the natural space and improve the lives of the people of Graciosa. If it has been decided in other places, why give it up to maintain paradise?
I know that discrepancies will arise on some issues and that in order to make the right decisions we will have to listen to everyone, as we will do, for example, in the first Plenary Session that the City Council holds on the eighth island and that I hope to have the honor of convening. But also a future full of opportunities where "everyone is looking for that place...looking for paradise La Graciosa". Make it happen.
By Marcos Bergaz, PSOE candidate for Mayor of Teguise