There are moments in the history of a territory when a generation has to decide whether to limit itself to administering what it receives or if it is willing to build the future that those who come after will receive. Lanzarote finds itself, once again, facing one of those decisions.
Currently, we talk a lot about housing, tourist saturation, water shortages, mobility, waste, pressure on public services, or loss of territory. But all these problems have a common denominator: for too long we have allowed tourist development to become the main criterion for deciding how to plan our island, our home.
Today, Lanzarote needs to recover something it knew how to do for decades, and that is to set limits on "reckless" development.
To understand that this is not a utopian or populist proposal, one only needs to look at our own history. In 1991, during the presidency of Enrique Pérez Parrilla, the Cabildo promoted the Insular Territorial Planning Plan of Lanzarote. That instrument, definitively approved by the Government of the Canary Islands through Decree 63/1991, granted the Cabildo mechanisms for control and intervention over the island's territorial planning and established limits on growth programming. That political decision changed Lanzarote.
If Enrique Pérez Parrilla and those who accompanied him had not understood then that development had to be curbed, we would be living on a completely different island today. We would probably have more urban developments, more concrete, more roads, and many more tourist beds. We would also have less free territory and less landscape. The island we know - with all its contradictions and problems - is largely a consequence of those who had the courage to say that not everything that could be built should be built.
The 1991 PIOT was based on an idea that is once again essential today: territory has limits. The Plan itself established a differentiated territorial structure, delimited the maximum land for tourist centers, and indicated that municipal planning could not use its programming to increase the planned capacity.
Thirty-five years later, we need to recover that spirit. Because the problem is that Lanzarote once again finds itself facing the same dilemma as then, but with much greater population pressure.
The difference is that now we know what happens when we let the market alone set the course for an island. We see it in housing, which has become increasingly difficult to access for a growing portion of our population. We see it in the pressure on water and infrastructure. We see it in increasingly saturated roads. We see it in the transformation of our towns and coasts. And we see it in how our natural spaces are put at risk.
Above all, we see it in a question that no one should be able to evade anymore: how much more can Lanzarote grow without ceasing to be Lanzarote?
We do not need more speeches that confuse growth with progress. We need a policy that once again puts people, territory, and the general interest ahead of economic profitability. That means recovering Lanzarote.
Recovering it from development. Recovering it from speculation. Recovering it from the logic that everything has a price and that everything can become a business opportunity while it costs Lanzaroteños dearly to fill their shopping baskets, see their beaches and mountains occupied by tourists, experience water shortages, or see their neighborhoods or towns increasingly abandoned due to lack of public investment.
And recovering Lanzarote does not mean being against tourism, do not be mistaken. It means being against this tourist model that seeks to permanently adapt the island to its interests. Understanding that tourism must adapt to Lanzarote's limits, and not Lanzarote to the limits set by tourism.
That is why we need a tourist moratorium, rigorous territorial planning, limits on the growth of beds, a firm limitation of holiday rentals in residential areas, and an economic strategy that allows us to diversify our economy and strengthen the primary sector, local commerce, and activities related to the knowledge and care of our population.
But to do all this, having good planning documents is not enough. Organized people are needed.
Lanzarote was able to curb unlimited development because there was an organized society that understood that defending the territory was defending life itself and the right to the island. Associativism, environmental groups, neighborhood organizations, cultural movements, and political action were able to build a collective consciousness that set limits on economic power. This is evidenced in the documentary "Compartir, Transformar, Decidir" (Share, Transform, Decide), which I recommend watching.
That civil society remains essential. We need to recover associativism. We need to recover environmentalism as a transformative force. We need to recover neighborhood participation. We need our towns to discuss again what model of island they want. And we need to recover a politics that is not afraid to confront those who have more money, more capacity for pressure, or more access to offices.
Here arises an issue that we must address. If ultraliberal political forces continue to govern, having turned tourist growth into a kind of "all or nothing," we run the risk that decisions about Lanzarote's future will continue to be made from the logic of those who benefit most from that growth.
When a government renounces the exercise of public power to limit economic power, it ends up letting that economic power govern. And those who should defend the general interest end up acting as intermediaries for the interests of the large tourism industry, and the people lose their capacity for influence.
The problem arises when those interests end up prevailing over the right of the majority to have housing, to enjoy a unique and well-maintained territory, to have sufficient public services, or to live on an island that is not permanently at the service of the visitor.
We do not want hoteliers to govern Lanzarote directly. But we also do not want them to govern through their political intermediaries. Faced with this, we defend an idea: Organized people against organized money.
That must be the spirit of the new political stage that Lanzarote needs. The example of Enrique Pérez Parrilla reminds us that governing also means saying no. That planning means deciding what will not be built. That protecting the territory requires confronting powerful interests. And that an island is not defended solely with institutional declarations, but by making political decisions.
At this moment, a new step is being taken to update the insular planning after more than three decades. The progress of the new PIOL supposedly proposes, among other issues, greater territorial protection and a reduction in land allocated to new tourist beds. It is an opportunity, without a doubt. But a plan, by itself, will not save Lanzarote.
A society that once again believes it has the right to decide its future will do so. Institutions willing to exercise their responsibility will do so. Politics that does not bow down to those with greater economic capacity will do so.
Ultimately, a social majority that understands that setting limits is not hindering Lanzarote's progress, but quite the opposite, it is protecting it, will do so.
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