Since I began to first get to know, and later live, in the municipality of San Bartolomé, I was struck by how neat and well-kept this town was, seeing how its streets were clean, with well-maintained gardens, streets ...
Since I began to first get to know, and later live, in the municipality of San Bartolomé, I was struck by how neat and well-kept this town was, seeing how its streets were clean, with well-maintained gardens, streets with signs and adequate lighting for the normal use of its inhabitants, as well as how well paved most of its roads were.
One day I decided to change my residence from Punta Mujeres to San Bartolomé, among other things, because of the many and varied cultural offerings that take place in this town. As expected for those who know me, given my fixation on the sea, I chose to settle in Playa Honda. This fulfilled what I intended, to be close to the sea, without having to use the car, and at the same time have services and cultural offerings that interested me so much. This was a year and a half ago.
As I feel like a Lanzarote native at heart (I never liked nicknames), I want the best possible quality of life for the town where I live. What a surprise it was to realize the abandonment, discrimination, and contempt, as well as a lack of interest from the institutions in improving that quality of life in Playa Honda.
Today the excuse is the crisis, but what about before? What was the excuse? It must be remembered that Playa Honda is the second most populous nucleus in Lanzarote (not a municipality), with more or less 13,500 registered inhabitants, but it suffers a comparative grievance with respect to San Bartolomé that has no explanation, or does it? Maybe it's not politically correct for those causes to come to light.
You see, dear readers, Playa Honda is made up of 80 percent of people from outside, from the peninsula, South Americans, Africans, and members of the non-peninsular European community. It is therefore a tremendously open, multi-ethnic, and multi-racial town. But for the elders of the municipality of San Bartolomé, they will always be the "Godos" as I myself have heard.
It is the only town in the municipality that does not have a cultural center (eternally under construction). That does not have adequate sports facilities for the number of inhabitants, that does not have its own cultural events, and when there is a private initiative, the town hall denies them everything, reserving these for the greater glory and splendor of San Bartolomé.
But curiously, Playa Honda is the town that, by number of inhabitants, contributes the most in tax revenue to the municipality, which does not translate into having a comparatively acceptable conservation of the town, even having the audacity to say publicly by some councilor, that the items approved in full for the request for credits destined to the improvement of its roads are going to be used for other priorities such as the payment of the debt produced by bad management for years in the Town Hall, cheerfully skipping the decisions of the plenary sessions of the Town Hall.
We better leave the conservation of the asphalt of the streets where in most you can't walk with flip-flops because you crush them as soon as you travel 100 meters, due to their poor condition. Now they want to patch the road lighting by putting four lampposts in the main streets, leaving as always a scary movie light in the adjacent streets. I invite you to take a walk through those streets at night, but please, for your own good, don't come in flip-flops.
Another of the most painful grievances is the roads in and out of the town, totally insufficient for the movement of private vehicles that Playa Honda has. But if we also add to this an absolute lack of footbridges to cross the road and connect the town with the industrial area and the bus stops that exist there, in a pedestrian way. If these steps existed, I am sure that many would leave the car at their doorstep to walk to the industrial area.
Politicians, no one is thinking about segregation, since for the inhabitant of Playa Honda, it is not part of their interests. But I have wanted, in the use of my freedom of expression, to draw attention to the abandonment and discrimination suffered by this town in many aspects compared to the rest of the towns in the municipality of San Bartolomé to which it belongs, and I am aware that some of the shortcomings that I have mentioned are not the responsibility of the town hall, but that does not mean that this neglect in the search for solutions can or should be maintained.
Politicians of the island of Lanzarote, Playa Honda also exists!!
