One of the great bets that I have considered necessary in my two stages as counselor in charge of the Area of Education and Culture of the Cabildo of Lanzarote has been the promotion and support of university issues, despite the fact that not ...
One of the great bets that I have considered necessary in my two stages as counselor in charge of the Area of Education and Culture of the Cabildo of Lanzarote has been the promotion and support of university issues, despite the fact that this issue has not always been understood by some institutions when it comes to carrying out projects related to higher education, as an island like Lanzarote deserves.
I firmly believe that the Island Council, despite not having full powers in educational matters, has been a local entity that has been able to respond, within the limited capacity for action imposed by these times of crisis, to a part of the demands that university education needed and that the citizens of Lanzarote demanded of us. Citizens who, for economic, personal, family or work reasons, cannot always go abroad to train.
In the complicated economic and budgetary scenario in which we found ourselves upon arriving at the Island Government, I set myself the goal of assuming several strategic challenges related to the University, such as carrying out the calls for scholarships and study grants for the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 courses, unblocking the complex issue of the University Campus of Lanzarote, continuing with the university education of Tourism in its stage of adaptation to the new European Higher Education Area, as well as continuing to maintain the necessary training offer of the University Extension Courses, the Summer University, the Open Classroom or the University for Seniors "Peritia et Doctrina", among other actions.
I believe that, above any political ideology that is projected on the management of local institutions, one of the priority actions that should guide the course of entities such as the Island Council is the maintenance of educational subsidies to university citizens, through the well-known calls for scholarships and study grants. In our case, I can guarantee that since I arrived at the Area of Education and Culture, this has been one of my priorities as a counselor, given the complicated and difficult situation that many families in Lanzarote are going through who have children studying abroad. All the economic and technological efforts that the island administration employs in this regard will always be few.
On the other hand, I must also clarify that one of the institutional achievements that we should also be proud of has been to have implemented efforts to be able to agree on the definitive location of the future University Campus that Lanzarote has been demanding since the late nineties of the last century. After many considerations, meetings and debates, the Cabildo agreed that its creation could be projected in the town of Tahíche (Teguise), in a section of the so-called "Finca de Tahíche", specifically in the area called "Mojón Alto", next to the facilities of the future Mental Health Center, the Special Education Center and the Lanzarote Penitentiary Center. It is a plot of more than 277,000 m2, owned by the Cabildo. And this has been the key issue, the ownership of the land, which has determined the location of these university facilities in Tahíche.
To this end, the plenary session of the Island Corporation agreed, in a session held on July 29, 2010, to delegate the powers of its territorial planning to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Environment of the Government of the Canary Islands, in order to be able to project in said space a campus that houses the future facilities of the UNED, the University Schools of Tourism and Nursing, the Official School of Languages, as well as other dependencies related to the higher education field (University Residence, Library, Auditorium, Leisure-Sports Center, parks?).
I firmly hope that in the coming years this necessary project will be carried out definitively, with the unanimous collaboration of all institutions involved (island council, town halls, autonomous community and universities) and without political fissures that delay it in time. It will thus be possible to constitute a model space for culture, research, university teaching and in which all the institutions that are established there will share resources and infrastructures.
Another of our institutional commitments has been the University School of Tourism of Lanzarote. The Bologna Reform, with the implementation of the new Degree in Tourism, is allowing our School to continue, strategically and hand in hand with the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, constituting itself as a consolidated training reference (since 1993) that is actively and positively enabling the training of many professionals in a sector that is called to open a gap in the economic recovery of our region.
Also, and no less important, have been, in this time of budget cuts, the efforts made by the Department of Universities and Education in its work of continuing to offer University Extension training programs, the university information program for high school students or, of projects such as the Training Program for Seniors "Peritia et Doctrina" in Lanzarote, the Open Classroom or the Summer University, as rigorous training actions that serve to configure and dignify an annual structure of complementary training aimed not only at university students, but also at all citizens who wish to expand their knowledge and update the professional skills and abilities of a broad sector of our society.
To all this we must add the necessary collaborations to support certain initiatives and institutions that, directly or indirectly, are contributing to the fact that the island fabric of services and university actions in Lanzarote is a tangible reality. I am talking about our support, through educational subsidies, to the Associated Center of the UNED in Lanzarote, to the Spanish courses for foreigners that the International University "Menéndez y Pelayo" promotes in Puerto del Carmen (in collaboration with the Tías City Council) or to the Association of University Students Conejeros (AEUCO), among others.
These commitments with the university entities that the Cabildo of Lanzarote carries out, through the Area of Education and Culture, identify us with an institution committed to training and university culture, in order to guarantee the diversification, complementarity and improvement of the island's educational reality.
The Cabildo of Lanzarote, now more than ever, must not give up continuing to support in the future these strategic actions that this sector demands from the educational field, given that among the students and beneficiaries of these activities and services are many of the men and women who will work in and for Lanzarote in the future.
I am completely convinced of the need to support these university actions and activities, despite not always being understood by many people who think that in times of crisis these initiatives should be cut or eliminated.
We will go badly if we deviate from this path already started since the past decade of the nineties by the Island Council, in which our island (after Gran Canaria and Tenerife) has been accumulating in the university field a very valuable, enriching and respected experience, which does not deserve to be relegated to the background or be abandoned to its fate by the future government teams of local institutions.
Nor should we forget, or leave aside, the institutional efforts to achieve the reopening of the Insular Theater as a strategic space for the scene or the necessary conditioning to be able to revitalize the Insular Cultural Center "El Almacén" again, following that path of promotion and dissemination of contemporary culture, as César Manrique conceived it at the time.
Finally, I end this article, recalling that it was precisely our immortal César Manrique who, when referring to the need to reinforce educational and training actions by institutions, said that "a society without education is doomed to ruin".
Francisco Cabrera García,
Counselor of Education and Culture of the Cabildo of Lanzarote
