Any beginning is always a complex task. It is like that from the day we are born: starting to walk, trying to communicate, learning to relate... and each of those beginnings, always with its challenges, obstacles, satisfactions and learnings.
This mandate started in San Bartolomé with a clear project signed with the citizens, with goals to be achieved. A group of people committed to the municipality embarked -from a clear progressive ideology and the defense of the values on which social justice rests- on an adventure led by Alexis Tejera Lemes. We never thought that the roadmap set in May 2019 would be altered by events as painful as those experienced in recent months. His death has been a hard blow for San Bartolomé and, why not say it, for Lanzarote, because he was a man loved and respected throughout the island.
I will never tire of expressing the honor it is for me to have walked this path with Alexis, a colleague whose principles and personal values made a difference in the way of doing politics. Assuming the responsibility of being mayor of San Bartolomé is my daily tribute to the friend. Out of respect for the person he was and the way he chose to live, I have chosen to remember him with the joy of his ever-present smile, with the strength he entrusted to us, with the pride of being able to continue the project with which we began this journey.
San Bartolomé, like all of the Canary Islands and practically the entire planet, is suffering the socio-economic and health consequences of a pandemic that has forced us to understand life in a way unknown until now, to adapt to new conditions.
I said before that every beginning is always a complicated task, but frankly I must confess that my new responsibility is not a leap into the void: fortunately I have had the best teacher and companion, the best team and the best scenario, which is none other than the municipality of San Bartolomé.
We are thus continuing a project that remains intact, because we know it is the best for the municipality. This has been evident with the pandemic: in the worst moment, we have been able to respond forcefully to the citizens and we have understood the urgency of increasing as much as possible the commitment to effective social policies.
COVID has exposed the weaknesses of our society, but it also teaches us a series of lessons that we must not forget, such as the example of strength of our elders, their capacity for adaptation and resistance to adversity. We are committed to comprehensive care from the full awareness that very different realities coexist within this sector. For this reason, we have launched a personalized care program to avoid social isolation and we continue working for their well-being with projects such as the family respite center or the articulation of a complete volunteer network.
Today we would not understand our municipality in any other way. We do not understand it without them, nor without a youth that wants to take on the world and needs the instruments to achieve it. They are called to lead the environmental revolution, to set the cultural pace, to change the course of the planet, to develop their infinite transformative capacity. They represent the future and the San Bartolomé of tomorrow will depend on the voice we give them today. We need them and we must continue creating meeting and reflection spaces for them adapted to their demands and, above all, to what they have to say.
Alexis always said that the value of this municipality lies in its people, in the almost 20,000 people who build it every day. I frankly believe that this is the case. Let's continue working together for a social, supportive and sustainable San Bartolomé, an inclusive municipality, that dreamed municipality.
Isidro Pérez, Mayor of San Bartolomé
