From Occurrence to Occurrence and I speak because it is my turn.
There would be many ways to start this article; some of them as striking as the famous phrase of the emeritus King Juan Carlos I to the president of Venezuela (the famous "Why don't you shut up?") while he was rambling on and on with senseless occurrences at a meeting.
However, addressing myself in certain terms would be improper of me and even contrary to the education and ethics that my parents instilled in me, although there are times when one is about to lose patience. So, what needs to be done is to take a deep breath, reflect, and shut oneself up instead of telling the other to shut up; at least that's how my parents raised me.
Therefore, let's better talk about 'presidential occurrences' and let each one interpret what they consider.
The political moment we are experiencing forces me to think if there really are differences in politics between people who are dedicated and have a vocation for public service and people who live off the public and repeat like a parrot with a microphone what occurs to them and sounds good or what they believe people want to hear because their advisor friend hired with public money told them.
We see, for example, how we are told about sustainability and clean energy, while in the last four years not a single watt of green energy has been installed.
We see how they talk to us about land consumption, while they defend the construction of new roads instead of burying the existing ones.
We see how they tell us that the change of model is working because Irish tour operators give us the award for the best winter destination compared to Dubai and other destinations, when the reality is that this year, if the accounts do not fail, Lanzarote has been receiving this award for 21 years, and consecutively.
We see how they talk to us about sustainable tourism and fewer tourists, while they happily announce that more frequencies for the island have been achieved at the last fair.
And before all this we remain silent, some accept octopus as a pet, and we don't even waste energy in reminding those who govern that we cannot contribute anything because, in total, it seems that they already have everything planned assuming that it is what we all want (read in an ironic way). Remember that this government knows everything because it has the gift of supreme wisdom and, as if that were not enough, it is a presidential word.
But there are speeches that we must answer because they are repeated more and more in the media by people who know as much about tourism as I do about Space Engineering, and they speak and repeat that Lanzarote needs quality tourism like the one we had in the 80s, not the tourism of today.
Many of these parrots did not even exist in the 80s, they hear about that tourism that spent a lot and gave very high tips, but they do not know that that tourism was not of quality but that they had a very high standard of living, compared to the misery that was experienced in the beginnings of tourism in Lanzarote.
In fact, upon the arrival of tourism, the worker earned more in tips than in salary because, for a German, for example, 1,000 pesetas of the time was nothing while for us it was a lot.
In those years, the German tourist arrived in Lanzarote with their 500 mark bills and the Norwegian with their crowns.
Their currency was so strong against the peseta that they seemed like very rich people, when the reality is that it was as if we were traveling to a poor country with a weak currency and we seemed like very rich people when in reality we are minimum wage workers. I don't know if I'm explaining myself.
By the way, I have to say that many of those tourists continue to come to the island every year and even their children and grandchildren come regularly and remember the old times when everything was different, especially how cheap everything was for them.
And I am concerned about the discourse, not because they miss those times when the vast majority of us were poor, where many young people could not go to study but to work, and where many families 'sacrificed' their older children employing them where there was work to be able to send the youngest to the University and the family could subsist.
I am concerned about the discourse, I said, because now the PSOE of Lanzarote in its eagerness for prominence and with its president of the Cabildo advised by her friend, the head of the Presidency Cabinet, have radicalized our discourse that Lanzarote is a different island, an island in which we take care of our environment, an island that maintains our essence.
Now it turns out that they have killed the discourse and what they are selling is that the tourist who comes is bad for the island, that we need better tourists. And the lady president happily says that now we are betting on higher quality tourism, looking for markets in other countries, implying that the British tourist is not of the quality that Lanzarote needs.
The sensationalist headlines of some British media have not been long in coming and are circulating everywhere. The message is that "Lanzarote is fed up with English tourists and is looking for higher quality tourists in other destinations".
And we are not only talking about the press, it is what the world of the internet has, everything runs and runs and there are pages and forums in which English tourists are already crying out to the heavens because it has occurred to our president to say that she will look for other markets of tourists who spend more at the destination. Something she says, I imagine, because her advisor friend told her to say it because many were going to applaud her.
If she had bothered to look at the Cabildo's own data, she would know that British tourism is the one that spends the most at the destination. She only has to look a little around her and see the number of Irish and English bars that there are in Lanzarote creating, by the way, many jobs thanks to British tourism.
As I said at the beginning, there are speeches that have no more sense than being a simple occurrence, in this case a regrettable presidential occurrence.
I share the president's concern about the growth of the island. The population has grown to such an extent that housing has become a real problem, but it turns out that it has nothing to do with the nationality of the tourist but with the null management of who governs.
I agree, and it has been worked on for some time, that the 'all inclusive' should be eliminated in Lanzarote, because it is not necessary on an island that can boast of ample business muscle to serve tourists outside the hotel.
But one thing is to say that we are going to work so that the tourist leaves more at the destination with concrete actions and another very different thing is to despise British tourism as if it were a tourism that is going to end Lanzarote.
By the way, if you don't remember, when we talk about the purchasing power of the tourist of the 80s, we don't realize that that tourist was the one who stayed in small complexes for just a few thousand pesetas, but it was a mass tourism that arrived with pounds and German marks against our poor peseta.
Let's not forget that they arrived on an island of a poor country that had recently emerged from a Dictatorship in which many, many people went hungry.
Perhaps the PSOE of Lanzarote misses those times of poverty where it triumphed with its populist speeches that then did not fulfill as now.
But, nowadays, if we talk about Lanzarote in general or Puerto del Carmen in particular, we are talking about a destination with 5-star hotels, where the tourist pays up to 400 euros a night, or a destination with tourist villas that are worth thousands of euros a week.
I don't know about you, but that seems like a lot of money to me. And I say, that if they have thousands of euros to pay for a villa, perhaps it is because it is a tourist with a lot of purchasing power, at least compared to the average citizen.
So please, Madam President, do not repeat like a parrot everything that your advisors paid with public money tell you, no matter how good it sounds, and if you want to talk about tourism, ask the professionals on the island. They will give you free advice.
So if your latest presidential occurrence is to declare Lanzarote saturated with tourism, remember that this is the same as telling all our tourists that we are a massified destination and that it is better not to come.
Try to be a little more humble and speak only when necessary, lest in the end we have to say the same thing that the emeritus king said to the president of Venezuela.
