I don't know how many of you have seen the documentary "La Manos", but I would like to invite you to see its last showing this Saturday at the Insular Theater. This is a production produced by the Tourist Centers (CACT) that tells, through the voices of those who made the Tourist Centers with their own hands, what such an undertaking meant in those years, helping to understand not only the history of the CACT, but also of the island of Lanzarote itself. What we were, what we are and, I dare say, what we want to be.
Lanzarote had spent decades in despair, resignation and conformity, with the feeling that this island was a "rudderless" ship in which only one political leader managed to "excite" for the duration of a great deception under the shelter of his oratory skills, as enormous as the disappointment it caused for so many people, among whom, I confess, I include myself. A real "bluff" maintained by successive and bad government partners who limited themselves to distributing a cake that they devoured with relish, sinking the public companies of this island. But you already know that story.
Meanwhile, permanent disputes, power struggles, betrayals and backroom deals have been the island's norm. The last of these episodes occurred just recently, when the leadership of the island's PSOE tried to destabilize four institutions in which it co-governed in Lanzarote with the Canarian Coalition, abandoning the island government with flimsy excuses in the purest and most rancid style, but this time CC brought calm and responsibility by maintaining the pact in the three remaining institutions, thwarting the Machiavellian socialist plan.
From a historical perspective, it should be remembered that between the 60s and 80s Lanzarote had a proposal, an idea of how the island's development model should be, a proposal inspired by the intervention of the people of Lanzarote in the natural environment and participated in by many, but crystallized in the figure of the brilliant César Manrique, Jesús Soto, Luis Morales, and so many collaborators as the documentary relates.
Manrique conceived and proposed an idea of collective development and a territorial model that, although not at first, was accepted by almost everyone for a long time. Many hands contributed to execute that idea with which the population felt comfortable and identified and that was a source of pride and admiration for everyone who participated in the project or visited the island.
Those who only know the most recent history of the island will find it unthinkable that a consensus of that nature is possible in Lanzarote, and yet it existed, it was real, and it has been captured in the documentary "Las Manos".
But instability settled in Lanzarote's politics for reasons known to almost everyone, and since 1993 a policy of all-out war has been imposed in Lanzarote that lasted until the end of the last decade. However, from 2009, coinciding with the renewal of the Canarian Coalition and my arrival to the Presidency to which I never aspired, despite the rivers of ink that have been written, the hours of radio and conspiracies that those of always employ to demonize me, unable to bear the loss of political and media power of yesteryear; the truth is that the island has recovered a certain serenity and political stability that has allowed us to overcome most of the main problems that it dragged, be it the management of its public companies, the treatment of its waste, the populism with which the problems of our primary sector were faced, or the determined commitment to the change of energy model.
These last five and a half years have served to restore the hope that things could be done in another way, as we already did from those years 60 to 80 -saving the distances because I am not and do not pretend to be Pepín Ramírez, because there is only one Cesar, and because the society of Lanzarote has changed a lot since then- and something of that must have seen the more than 20 people, "significant" but without known political affiliation, who decided to take the step of publicly supporting what anonymously had already supported the majority of voters in 2011, that is, the project with which I aspire to continue presiding over the island government.
It is about continuing to build the future of Lanzarote, with the same hands, together with others, among which this score is only a sample of the more than 300 projects included in the Lanzarote 2020 Strategy that must mark the future of the island in the coming years, and that will have as their flag and maximum priority the change of energy model. An energy model to which the central government of the PP is putting so many difficulties, which also refuses to banish the oil threat from our coasts.
For all this and so many more things that would take me many articles to explain, it is why I appeal to the common sense of this people who need as never before to maintain political stability in order not to stop the undeniable progress of Lanzarote. I appeal to the danger that a fragmented political arc would pose, which could turn the institutions into ungovernable ones, and to the balance of where we were in 2009 and where we are now, to ask you to renew your trust in us.
* Pedro San Ginés, candidate of the Canarian Coalition to the Presidency of the Cabildo of Lanzarote
