By Pedro San Ginés
Dear Mr. López Aguilar: I have considered it appropriate to convey my surprise and concern about the statements you made during your recent and last visit to Lanzarote, regarding the conflict of the ...
Dear Mr. López Aguilar:
I have considered it appropriate to convey my surprise and concern about the statements you made during your recent and last visit to Lanzarote, regarding the conflict of oil exploitation in the Canary Islands.
As you well know, the Canary Islands administrations are working intensely to avoid everything that represents, in form and substance, the industrial project that both Repsol and the PP government want to impose on us by force. I remind you that this is not just any project, but a very specific one that seriously threatens our oceanic environment and our main economic pillar, but also the legitimacy of a democracy that is intolerably battered by the absolute autocracy that the PP government imposes from Madrid.
The Canary Islands risk a lot, too much, with the risks of a highly polluting activity and susceptible to serious accidents, as you can see from the spills and fires of recent months.
The spills and explosions that, from January 2013 to date, have transpired in the media - because we also deduce that there are spills that do not transcend - represent the best proof that neither the most advanced technology, nor the most modern companies can guarantee anywhere in the world that their drilling will not pollute the environment, especially when it comes to very deep waters, trying to reach even deeper deposits on beds with denoted seismic activity, and very close to a coast populated by human beings.
There are many people who say that absolute safety cannot be guaranteed in this or anything else, and it is true, but it is also true that when so much is risked, with so many thousands or hundreds of thousands of families behind, we must be very cautious and not be carried away by general concepts to assume as normal the risk of the operations of an industry owned by foreign multinationals. For us, only the doubt about safety in operations is more than enough to reject the enormous risk it entails for our population and for our future.
Isn't the damage caused in the last three years by this industry in different parts of the planet sufficient reference? Two platforms crashed in Alaska, a spill on the Peruvian coast, three platforms burned in the Gulf of Mexico, two spilling in the North Sea, and a company, Repsol, which while here spends a fortune to publicize that everything is under control and that we should not worry, has recorded nearly 7,000 spills in just four years, two sanctions imposed by the Council of Ministers in a single year, and another recent one of 500,000 euros for another spill just eight months ago in Tarragona, among others.
Mr. López Aguilar, I would like to remind you that it was precisely, and with very good judgment, the impulse and the decision of the Socialist Party of Lanzarote and the Island Council of Lanzarote that in 2004 managed to get the Supreme Court to suspend the first authorization granted in the Council of Ministers by the Aznar Government in December 2001. A magnificent example of courage that today shines totally for its absence if we pay attention to your personal and political involvement as a representative of the citizens who voted for you in the Canary Islands and who reject the threat of oil.
I also remind you of the meetings held last year in Brussels and in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria with technicians from the Cabildo de Lanzarote and with the Government of the Canary Islands, in which your support was agreed for two initiatives of the utmost importance in the fight against prospecting: the so-called Written Declaration, on the one hand, and the citizen complaint in the Petitions Committee, on the other hand. Both initiatives, eight months later, have been abandoned and we have not even received a response to the numerous emails that have been sent since January 2013 from the Cabildo de Lanzarote and from the Office of the Government of the Canary Islands in Brussels to your office in that city.
On the other hand, it is also surprising the support you gave to the new European Directive that will regulate from now on the extraction of oil in the high seas for the states of the European Union, approved with your vote along with those of the European Popular Party, on May 21.
Against the political criteria promoted in defense of the Canary Islands by the European Greens, by the European Plural Left, and even by some socialists who distanced themselves from the line more favorable to the oil industry, you chose to support the criterion of the right aware that this new regulation would not prevent exploitation in the Canary Islands, but the most curious thing is that you, after voting with the European right on this issue, sent that same day a press release in the Canary Islands - the only one since the operations were approved more than a year ago - showing your protest against oil exploitation in the archipelago. In reality we should not be surprised by this type of political behavior, but now, given the media and disproportionate push that Repsol and the Spanish government are making to impose their truth and their ambitions, it is worrying that a politician like you, in practice, aligns himself with their side.
Do not doubt, Mr. López Aguilar, that you are in an antagonistic place to where you should be in this serious institutional and democratic conflict. From the Canary Islands we cry out to the rest of the world for support to stop this threat that would not let us sleep if the platforms began to be visualized on the horizon of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, in front of our most important coasts, and for a more rational and coherent future.
Finally, Mr. López Aguilar, I would appreciate it if in the future you would respect the position that the Canary Socialist Party has agreed on this matter, and try to strive from your political position to represent the defense of the Canary public interest above the private interest of a multinational industry.
Sincerely,
Lanzarote, July 30, 2013
THE PRESIDENT
Pedro M. San Ginés Gutiérrez
