If there is a person who represents the idiosyncrasy of the Canarian youth, it is undoubtedly the artist Quevedo. No one like him has symbolized the island dream, the dream of succeeding while carrying the flag of the Canary Islands.
We are the Quevedo generation, the one of Cruz Cafuné and Ptazeta, the generation that should have had everything to succeed and we simply survive, admiring how a few succeeded. The generation that stopped dreaming because it was too expensive. We have lived tying one crisis after another, postponing our life project, because we are the generation that was left for later.
Living in paradise has consequences. The Canary Islands is one of the territories that leads the risk of poverty in the State according to the AROPE 2022 report: 10 points above the state average. First, it was difficult for us to access our first job despite being trained, having one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and in Europe. When we get a job, job insecurity, the cost of living or the lack of available housing makes it difficult for us to become independent or have the capacity to save. And we begin to lose hope.
That is why we need policies that understand our archipelagic reality, because the needs of a person in Caleta de Sebo are not the same as the needs of someone in Arrecife, Teguise or Playa Blanca. Policies that understand that we are a diverse sector, because at 18 we do not have the same needs as at 20 or 30. Policies that understand that we are a fragmented territory with an outermost region condition, because if everything is already difficult for young people, in the Canary Islands it is much more difficult. Let us not be punished with extra costs for living on islands far from the continent. But politics is about finding solutions. We need a Pact for Employment, which does not forget our Statute of Autonomy, that measures adapted to the condition of outermost region are applied.
We have an advantage: having inherited a State of Law, a heritage that we must take care of. Next Sunday we are playing for issues that affect us in our daily lives in our island reality, from the resident discount that we use to go to concerts, work or travel; a housing policy that understands our fragmented territory reality; a Pact for Employment for the Canary Islands or that we continue to be an open land, in which no one tells us who to love or who to be. Next Sunday, the Canary Islands is at stake and you are at stake and if you let others decide for you, you have already lost.
For that reason, we need Canarian nationalist deputies who are not submissive, whose only obedience is to the Canary Islands, who understand our reality and claim what corresponds to us by right to stop being the lost generation and become the found generation. Nationalist deputies in whom, like Quevedo "leave the islands, but the islands do not leave them". For the Canary Islands and for you, choose the Canary Islands.
Cristina Calero. Lanzarote representative on the CC provincial list to the Congress of Deputies.
