It wasn't so long ago that in Haría water was a liturgy of low clouds and overflowing pools. The “Kingdom of the North” was distinguished by that insolent greenery that defied the geological aridity of the rest of the island. However, today, that pride crumbles with the same fragility as the parched land of abandoned farms. The municipality dehydrates before the indolent gaze of institutions that seem to have erased the north from their map of priorities…
Haría's water crisis is not an accident, but the symptom of a deep territorial imbalance. The north perishes from pure administrative neglect and from a structural injustice that condemns its residents to second-class citizenship.
While in the large consumption centers abundance is taken for granted, in towns like Máguez, Guinate or Arrieta, the simple act of opening a tap has transformed into an exercise of uncertainty. This asymmetry is an institutional lack of respect towards those who guard the rural identity of Lanzarote.
Recurring breakdowns and pressure anemia are not isolated incidents, but the material fatigue of a pipeline network that, like the landscape itself, can no longer withstand more paper promises. It has been implicitly accepted that the north be a sacrifice zone, a territory where the cost of maintenance seems not to compensate the profitability of the service.
Responsibility is diluted in a labyrinth of competencies, a game of mirrors where blame is an intruder and solutions never arrive. Millionaire investments are announced in air-conditioned offices while the reality on the street is that of farms cracking and millennial palm groves languishing. Without irrigation water or guaranteed domestic supply, the official discourse on food sovereignty is revealed as an empty shell, a shrewd campaign slogan that evaporates with the first supply cuts…
There is no sustainability or possible cohesion if one of our most emblematic lands is allowed to wither from thirst due to abandonment. The patience of the Harianos is not infinite and the voicelessness of the administrations before the clamor of the north is an open wound in the credibility of our public system. It is complicity with the disaster…
Water management is the measure of a government's decency. If institutions do not guarantee that the island's sap reaches the north with the same fluidity with which they issue their promises, they will have failed in their most elemental social contract.
Haría does not claim privileges, it demands the primary right in the face of institutional drought. It is time for water to stop being an object of political marketing to become a guaranteed right again, regardless of the postal code.
The “Valley of a Thousand Palm Trees” is custodian of our identity. If we allow its trunks to succumb to thirst, we will be renouncing what makes us unique. Saving water in Haría is preserving the soul of Lanzarote before a desert of silent stones and darkened offices devours everything.
Let's not surrender our history to the desert…
