The latest episode of submission of the Canarian Socialist Party to Pedro Sánchez – regarding the umpteenth attempt to violate our REF and the loss of a large part of the tax differential that the Canary Islands had been enjoying to be competitive in the film industry compared to the rest of the peninsular territory, and which has generated so much wealth and employment for thousands of people when we needed it most – is just one more example of the colonial treatment to which the central government subjects us time and again, whether by stealing the funds from the road agreement despite the Supreme Court ruling, turning its back on the serious problem of immigration in the Canary Islands, or denying us the promised tourism recovery plan for a region ravaged by the pandemic.
This is the consequence of the vassalage of the local PSOE, which has not only consented to the above, but has even justified it with entanglements and dances of figures, into whose details I will not go, until, prisoners of their own lies, they have found themselves in the dead end of their parliamentary minority and have finally had to swallow them, saying one thing when they said another, and have been forced to defend our jurisdiction and economic heritage, which should have been their obligation from the first moment.
I don't know if anyone knows the names of the deputies of the Canary Islands in Congress, or of the Canarian senators in the Upper House, what I do know is that while the deputy of the Canary Islands, Ana Oramas, or the senator for the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, as they are known, are tearing themselves apart in Madrid to protect our interests, the rest show time and again that for them the first thing is not the Canary Islands but to attend as faithful vassals to the directives emanating from the capital by their respective parties, turning their backs on the land they represent.
There was a recent time when the Government of the Canary Islands fought together with the nationalist deputies and senators to conquer improvements for our archipelago. Today, the latter unfortunately have to concentrate their energies on not allowing what has already been conquered to be stolen from us with the complicity of their local coreligionists, despite the unemployment and ERTE rates that plague and threaten the Canary Islands.
As a Canarian, I have felt vicarious shame when listening to the pretexts of the Canarian PSOE to justify first the contempt for the Canarian Parliament, to which they did not carry out the mandatory consultation to unilaterally modify our REF downwards, to end up yesterday approving in the Parliament itself a report that rejects the previously denied violation of our REF, and that in accordance with our Statute of Autonomy obliges the State to sit down with the Canary Islands in a bilateral commission to address the outrage, now yes, admitted.
As a Lanzaroteño, the shame was double when listening to the senator for Lanzarote, the socialist Manuel Fajardo, on the one hand boasting that the Senate prevented the vote on Fernando Clavijo's proposal to simply respect our REF, under the peregrine pretext that the State would have less collection of the Corporation Tax, and on the other hand, defending satisfied the benefits of a royal decree that, although it improves the situation, continues to flagrantly violate our REF because it does not maintain the differential that corresponds to us. Fortunately and finally, even the Canarian Parliament, with the participation of the PSOE, has amended the plan and has ended up rejecting so much satisfaction and benefits, even if only to avoid being in a clear parliamentary minority.
And now what? Well, now it is not enough for the president of the Government of the Canary Islands to be angry once again, very angry, as he has already done with so many other issues in which Pedro Sánchez has taken his anger for granted. It only remains to demand with rotundity respect for the Canary Islands and its people within that commission, even if it means resorting to the Constitutional Court as we have already done successfully in the past, when we did not allow this colonial treatment.
