There are places where one is born and places where one learns to live. Sometimes they coincide, other times they don't, but that doesn't make the feeling of belonging any less authentic.
These days, when we talk about candidates running for the Canary Islands without having been born here or without a known connection to our islands, I inevitably return to thinking about my own story.
I was born in Córdoba. My first ten years were spent in a humble neighborhood, in a family with many economic difficulties and few opportunities. My childhood was marked by hardship, but also by the effort of a mother who never resigned herself to those circumstances determining our future.
At just 11 years old, my mother made a decision that would change our lives: to move to Lanzarote with four young children.
She didn't come with a job offer. Nor did we have a house waiting for us; that's how our story began on this island.
Over time, in Playa Honda, something arrived that had been missing until then: the peace of mind of knowing we could get ahead.
Lanzarote gave us an opportunity. My mother, with her effort, knew how to seize it.
I grew up in Playa Honda. I went to school there, made practically all my friends, and lived the years that end up becoming a person's most important memories. There I met Canary Islanders by birth and tradition, who opened the doors of their homes and customs to me with a naturalness I have never forgotten.
Without realizing it, I made my own a way of speaking, of living together, of understanding life, and of loving this land. There was no specific day when I started to feel Canarian. It simply happened. Among the classrooms at school, the afternoons playing football at the "teleclub" with friends, and the daily life of a "neighborhood" (as we from Playa Honda like to call it) that ended up being mine.
And I never needed to stop feeling like I was from Córdoba to also feel Canarian.
Because identity doesn't have to be a choice between the place you come from and the place you belong to. We can keep our roots and, at the same time, grow new ones. We can love the land where we were born and feel a deep attachment to the one where we have built our lives.
That is why I firmly believe that the feeling of belonging to the Canary Islands can be built beyond the place of birth.
Being Canarian is a reality that each person lives from their own history. For many, it begins with generations of family roots. For others, like me, it is born from a shared experience, from the bonds we create, and from a land that ends up becoming an inseparable part of who we are.
Sometimes I think about that woman who arrived in Lanzarote with four children, without a job and with hardly any resources. And I think about what would have become of us if she hadn't made that decision. I have no answer. What I do know is that the opportunities we found here changed our lives.
I always say that my family and I owe everything to Lanzarote. It is my way of expressing a gratitude that has not faded over the years. On the contrary, the older I get, the more aware I am of what that opportunity meant.
That gratitude also explains my vocation for public service with this step forward. Not because there is a debt that can be settled, but because I believe that one of the best ways to thank the opportunities received is to contribute to others also being able to find them.
I would like any child growing up in the Canary Islands today, whether born here or having arrived from elsewhere, to be able to look to the future with the same hope that my family found in Lanzarote thirty years ago. That is why I defend a Canarian nationalism that does not ask where you were born, but what future we want to build together; a united nationalism, capable of defending the interests of this land and of those who live in it. That is the idea of the Canary Islands that I find in Coalición Canaria and that has led me to commit to this project.
I do not intend for my story to represent everyone's. It is simply mine. But it has taught me something that I consider valuable: roots are not always inherited. They are also built, day by day, through the people who accompany us, the places we make our own, and the decisions we make.
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