On November 10th, we Spaniards have a new appointment with the polls as a result of Pedro Sánchez and the PSOE's belief that new elections will bring them a greater number of deputies, even if it means paralyzing the country in a kind of "sham of a negotiating process" in which they never believed.
The history of the Canary Islands is full of examples of the many occasions in which both the PSOE and the PP have despised our islands, and only a few of how, when the votes of the nationalist deputies have been necessary, this autonomous community has had the treatment it deserves. A good example of this were the budgets of 2017 and 2018, the only ones in which the average investment in the Canary Islands has been at the level of the national average, as required by our economic and fiscal regime and now also by our Statute of Autonomy. But it was not because of the PP's sensitivity to the Canary Islands, but because that was the nationalists' demand to support those general budgets.
The fact is that, after the censure that led the PSOE to the Presidency of the Government with the support of the separatists, and after deceiving all Spaniards with the unfulfilled promise that he would call immediate elections, Pedro Sánchez and his party betrayed the Canary Islands in the budgets they presented in 2019, violating our statute and our REF only a few months after its approval.
However, the worst thing is that they have done so with the complicit silence of the Lanzarote deputy for the PSOE, Ariagona González, and the senator, also a socialist, Manuel Fajardo Palarea, whose work has ultimately been completely useless for Lanzarote and La Graciosa. God forbid that I should call either of them useless, but it is difficult for the presence of two public officials in both houses - Congress and Senate - to be of any use to the island when between them they do not add up to a single initiative for Lanzarote and La Graciosa in the almost half a year they were in office.
On the other hand, neither the PP has been able, willing or wanted to defend the interests of Lanzarote and La Graciosa when it has had the opportunity. The best example of this was when the senator for the island defended oil exploration off our coasts, which the vast majority of the population rejected.
In short, I honestly believe that the representatives of Lanzarote have probably had the best will towards their island, but I am fully convinced that the only valid option to defend the interests of Lanzarote and the Canary Islands with guarantees, without being influenced by the guidelines of the state-wide parties to which they belong, is the determining presence of the nationalists in both houses, and Ana Oramas and Pedro Quevedo have given ample evidence of this.
On the other hand, the worst thing that can happen to us is that the senator from Lanzarote belongs to the party that governs in the country, because then the level of demand and vindication is reduced to the minimum expression. As things stand, and with Coalición Canaria being the second political force in votes to the Senate in the last elections, before the nationalist unity, in the present elections the CC-PNC-NC alliance is presented as the only one capable of unseating the PSOE in the race for the Senate and our presence in the Congress of Deputies is an imperative necessity. That is why I ask for the useful vote of those who consider that the PSOE is not an adequate alternative for Lanzarote, as they have already demonstrated. I ask for it for Samuel Martín as a candidate for the Senate and for Eduardo Díaz for the Congress. So that Canarian nationalism, moderate and integrating, but demanding with our rights, is present in both houses, thus guaranteeing that the voice of Lanzarote will not remain silenced as until today.
Pedro San Ginés Gutiérrez is the spokesperson for the Nationalist Group (CC-PNC-SB) in the Cabildo of Lanzarote.
