In Lanzarote and La Graciosa, unfortunately, we confuse the instruments with the objectives. We twist opportunities until they become inconveniences. The impertinent and irresponsible statements of the still president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, the socialist María Dolores Corujo, are a clear example of this negligent distortion of reality. Without there being a pre-electoral process in between, which there is, as a neighbor of this land I have been amazed not only by the lack of planning of the current Government of the Cabildo but also by its constant mania of improvising and releasing anything without thinking about the near and future consequences.
You cannot declare that Lanzarote is “touristically saturated”, even invent the creation of a figure of this type without any prior debate in plural bodies such as the Biosphere Reserve Council, and move on to something else as if that were not going to have consequences in the fluctuating markets in which tourist reservations are contracted, almost the sole and fundamental sustenance of this island. Her own general secretary of the PSOE in the Islands and current president of the Government of the Canary Islands, the also socialist Ángel Víctor Torres, had to come out to position himself totally against these approaches.
He went so far as to say on a local radio station in Fuerteventura that he was terrified to hear speeches about the need for the number of tourists who visit us to decrease. It must be that they don't talk to each other or that the PSOE works like Pancho Villa's Army, each one goes his own way without caring about the rest. Either that, or they say on each island what they think its inhabitants want to hear, as if the citizens of Lanzarote knew nothing about those of Fuerteventura, or those of Fuerteventura about those of La Palma.
The biggest mistake was believing that you can be the highest authority in Lanzarote, ignoring the importance that your statements have for the Island, however electoral they may be, as if in the internet age that axiom that determines that what happens a great distance from one cannot be the cause of the local debacle. That axiom, in tourism, precisely, with social networks and globalization, has been reversed to be located at the opposite pole: everything affects, everything has to be measured.
Tourism is the only economic instrument and wealth generation, also social, that our island has to guarantee the quality of life of its population; the true objective that must occupy politicians is to try to ensure that it does not disappear and that it is truly sustainable over time.
The president of the occurrences now fills her mouth talking about zero beds, sustainability, depredation of the territory, corrupt businessmen and media...; she even dares to blame my party and those media that she says serve us for what they have done, which is nothing more than messing up with measures such as the tourist moratorium, which caused the accelerated growth of endless beds, or squandering (I'll leave it there for now) hundreds of thousands of euros in planning that are hidden in the drawers because it is not in their interest to make decisions about our territory, decisions that have to go only in one direction: its protection. But protecting is not talking, it is acting. And these people know a lot about talking and little about doing. They fill their mouths, especially now that we are in the pre-election period, with containment measures, but then they authorize the construction of hotels with a thousand new beds; they talk about zero beds and approve huge partial plans where they govern; they believe in sustainable development and do not articulate a single measure to control the misuse that is sometimes given to what is called vacation homes, which is causing a clear distortion in our tourism control system.
The only instrument and the maximum objective go hand in hand. And it is not managed or achieved with occurrence after occurrence. The still president in her first days of mandate left in the hands of three “popes” economists from outside the Island the definition of our future, the exit from the pandemic and the Premium tourism that we were supposed to reach. Then they talked about attracting tourists, about exploring new markets. They play with our memory. Excellence as a destination, that's what they said without forgetting the quantity within the quality. People came here who, obviously, know less than ours to tell us how to attract tourists to a destination that logically woke up from the nightmare of covid. Great audacity for a place where we know how to do things. We have been an example for others, not a burden for anyone. That grace of the economists also cost a few thousand euros of public money. Results? None. Everything vanished without giving the slightest explanation of the supposedly fulfilled objectives. And nothing was explained because nothing was done. It was the prelude to a constant absurdity in which they have turned the roadmap that they do not have about the tourist future that they have not been able to build. Thank God that not everything depends on these people. Otherwise we would be talking about total ruin right now.
Then came the appointment of a non-elected Minister of the Environment, Elena Solís, who arrived because of that new pact with Podemos after the PSOE broke with the PP once they guaranteed to govern yes or yes by taking an act from Coalición Canaria, a whole example of political decency over which they almost always tiptoe. No one was consulted to sign that woman and no one was consulted to dismiss her a short time later. Solís left, highlighting what she had seen inside that Cabildo: absolute neglect, disorganization and dictatorial orders never oriented towards the general interest, much less towards the true protection of our fragile territory.
Without Solís, the PSOE must have discovered that they were orphaned of environmental support, hence the idea that Lanzarote had to be declared a “touristically saturated island”. A whole absurdity that borders on vile provocation when the person who says it is the person who has been at the head of the destinies of this land for four years and has done nothing to face its challenges.
I want to leave it written clearly and concisely. We have no more instrument to transform our reality and guarantee the quality of life of all our neighbors than tourism. And I will dedicate my greatest efforts to this since I preside over the Cabildo from next June. And I will do it with our people, putting myself at the head of the sector, its businessmen/women and workers/workers, of the civil and economic society of Lanzarote, of the environmental groups, of those of us who truly do not want more concrete or more beds, at the head of those who have worked on the reconversion of the plant and on the reduction of accommodation places, to lead tourism successfully in the face of the new restrictions that are marked by the protection of the territory, decarbonization and climate change. I write it clearly: I don't want a single tourist more but neither a tourist less. I will not allow a worsening of the quality of life of our people either and for that a powerful tourism sector is needed, respectful of the environment and in solidarity with each and every one of the agents that participate in the productive process.
In short, I will be to the death with the tourism sector without consuming a centimeter more of territory, requalifying our structures and infrastructures to make viable a quality, sustainable and universal tourism. For this, I will promote blue, sports, gastronomic and cultural tourism, where our historical heritage and idiosyncrasy are valued.
We must flee from statements such as those of the still president or those of the vice president of the Government of the Canary Islands, Román Rodríguez, who in his eagerness to become a champion of nothing, and of everything at the same time, imposes on us without hesitation his sonorous phrase of “you cannot come to Lanzarote when you want but when you can”, in an irresponsible display that takes care not to say in his native island and political reference. But he releases it here, in Lanzarote, to see what he can capture in the troubled river of the fragmented left and local Lanzarote. Here, the national sport is to play and improvise politically with what feeds our people. And that has to end.
On this island, we are all aware that not a centimeter more of our territory can be consumed. We are all aware that we have to adapt our mobility, productive capacity and social and economic objectives to the new environmental restrictions conditioned by global warming and the demanding and necessary European decarbonization policy. And, in these demands, we are fully located.
I hope that this brief analysis serves to, without bitterness, put the debate on the future of tourism in its precise place. And that it helps to face it from responsibility, understanding and the common objective.
And I end as I began: let's not confuse the instrument with the objective. Nor let's play with the well-being of our people. We shouldn't allow it.
