The next plenary session of the Cabildo de Lanzarote will be a great opportunity, a decisive moment to sound the alarms before our island experiences its own identity blackout. The motion to create the Insular Observatory of Canarian Identity from the area of Open Government that I manage, is born out of the urgency to protect what defines who we are: our history, our traditions, our landscape, and our way of life. Lanzarote and La Graciosa are not just territory; they are communities with memory, roots, and soul that we must care for before they are lost.
A clear example of what I want to tell you is Puerto Rico, the singer Bad Bunny composed in the year 2025 the song “What Happened to Hawaii”, a song that denounces how gentrification, real estate speculation and economic pressure can make a place stop belonging to its people. The lyrics are a cry of warning: when identity fades, people feel like strangers in their own land. Hawaii, Malta, Ibiza and other island territories face similar realities: for the visitor everything is paradise, but for those of us who live here it often becomes a space we no longer recognize as our own.
Lanzarote still has the opportunity to act before our identity is diluted. The Observatory I propose does not seek to curb the arrival of new residents or economic development: it seeks to guide it responsibly. This Observatory will be a permanent body that measures, analyzes, and anticipates cultural and social risks, protecting the transmission of traditions, architecture, oral memory, and the roots of what belongs to us. It will be something like our compass for growing without losing what makes us islanders and unique.
If we do not act, one day we could wake up and discover that, as Bad Bunny warns, our voice and the memory of our history have been extinguished. Protecting identity is not nostalgia or exclusion: it is ensuring that future generations recognize Lanzarote and La Graciosa as their home, not as a tourist stage devoid of roots.
I present this motion in the plenary as an act of responsibility, foresight, and commitment to our people. Because when identity is lost, cohesion, memory, and the soul of the island are extinguished. Lanzarote and La Graciosa can still remain lit. It depends on us to protect their light.
