The microalgae crisis

August 16 2017 (19:19 WEST)

For better or worse, we are suffering a strong crisis in the middle of the summer season that will not only damage the image of the Canary Islands in the face of beach tourism, but also demonstrates the incompetence of governance in the Archipelago.

The microalgae that have surrounded Tenerife and are already threatening other islands remain a mystery to the native population and other bathers, and the case has already reached the English press and we do not know if other foreign press of tourist importance. The truth is that the phenomenon does not go unnoticed, no matter how much they have prayed in the Canarian Coalition: that is not enough. 

The origin or possible adverse effects remain a mystery. Sometimes, I imagine that at any moment a photo of Fraga comes out on the front page of the local press, bathing in the middle of a disgusting floating brown, but every day I wake up and see that neither he nor any of those on this side of the Ouija board has the courage to do so.

Be that as it may, we have to put up with it and back down in the face of the spectacle we find on our beaches. The heat waves, the expectations of fishing with a rod or what any lout of the administration tells us in a low voice are all the same. But the annoyance does not end here, because here they have subjected the economy to tourism, to the service sector... and it is clear that this is not a good image.

When talking about tourismophobia, I don't think they count those who simply keep quiet, those who don't show their faces, those who were not able to face the crises as they are faced: with courage, data and solutions in hand. In the end, it will turn out that the biggest tourismophobes in the Archipelago are the same ones who have continually sold us to this sector, those who have only worried about making us so dependent, the same descendants of those who governed us from almost the time of the Spanish invasion and -possibly- now confuse the invasion of microalgae and imagine having the capacity to agree with them.

I think it is very clear that we have a great crisis in the Canary Islands. This is not a misgovernment, there is no one here who passes for governor, nor groups that can be called "government". And if they do, this time it was clear that they are just a gang of shameless people without political capacity and with a disguise that no longer works. 

 

*Pedro M. González Cánovas, member of the Canarian Nationalist Alternative (ANC)

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