Current politics frequently suffers from overcalculation and lack of memory. In Lanzarote, a territory whose geographical fragility goes hand in hand with its developmental greed, nostalgia is often a comfortable refuge to avoid making uncomfortable decisions. However, when the figure of Enrique Pérez Parrilla is invoked, it is not done from a melancholic remembrance of the past, but from an urgent present need. Reclaiming his legacy today is not an exercise in political archaeology. It is the realization that institutional audacity is missed.
Those who shared trenches with Pérez Parrilla, or those who take up his ideological mantle in defense of sustainability, agree on a clear diagnosis: the courage to set limits has been diluted in politically correct discourse.
During his years at the head of the Cabildo and the Arrecife City Council, the historic socialist leader demonstrated that governing a space as unique as this island involved assuming personal and political costs. He did not hesitate to confront giants of the construction industry or to decree the containment of hotel growth when economic inertia pushed in the opposite direction.
That was a time of moratoriums, of legal battles over urban planning legality, and of a clear vision of what the island's future should be.
The reality of Lanzarote today is far from that horizon of balance. The island is trapped in a housing, social, and infrastructure crisis, caused by an inertia that confuses tourism success with the volume of beds.
The uncontrolled boom in holiday rentals is expelling the local population from their neighborhoods, while the pressure on public services for water, energy, and waste management borders on disaster.
Current debates about mass tourism and the island's carrying capacity only serve to validate, decades late, the theses that Pérez Parrilla defended at the time.
The problem is not a lack of analysis and studies. Citizens and social groups have been pointing out the broken seams of the model for some time. What is scarce is executive determination.
The true spirit of Enrique Pérez consists precisely in breaking with immobility and understanding that the territory has physical limits that do not admit further extensions. To order the future of the island, debate forums or strategic plans that end up imprisoned in a drawer are not enough. The regulatory firmness that characterized the former president is needed. The most honest tribute that can be paid to his memory is not found in commemorative busts, but in daily legislative and municipal action.
Lanzarote needs leaders willing to accept the erosion of saying no to unsustainable development and to bet on the quality of life of its residents. The future of the island's model depends on recovering that political courage that one day showed that it was possible to govern in favor of the land and against the interests of a few.
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