Lanzarote has become the nerve center of irregular immigration with North Africa. No one is surprised anymore that one or more boats arrive full of people, whether adult men and women or minors. No one is surprised anymore by what is on its way to becoming normal. And no one does anything either to improve the conditions of those who risk their lives in this illegal trafficking of people at the hands of mafias that trade with the misery and lives of many people who, seeking a better life, endanger their existence in painful journeys that sometimes end up devoured by the Atlantic itself.
Nothing is surprising anymore. And the least surprising thing is that everyone looks the other way as if Lanzarote were a foreign land. No man's land. A place where its inhabitants and institutions have to face the problem without help or support. Human resources, which include civil protection volunteers, security forces and health services, are exhausted, day after day, doing the work that should be faced with many more personnel and in a more supportive way by Canarian, Spanish and European institutions.
The anguish of the people of Lanzarote is increasing every day. Not only because their services worsen in the face of the new functions undertaken by resources that are suffering, but also because of the enormous abandonment with which they experience these events. They miss an island leadership that places their problems in the appropriate instances. Some are already wondering if the same thing would happen if instead of Lanzarote we were La Gomera. Would the Government of the Canary Islands respond in the same way to the same problem if instead of this island it was La Gomera that was most affected? Everything points to no. And it is not a question of whether the party of the president of La Gomera is part of the Government of the Canary Islands. The party of the president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote is also in that government. What's more, the president of the government is a member of his party and both are deputies for their corresponding organizations and islands. The difference lies in having or not having leadership to successfully face a purpose. La Gomera clearly has it and I refer to the data.
The intensification of the migratory phenomenon has not caught us by surprise. In fact, months in advance we asked for the surveillance systems and the resources allocated to be reinforced, because everything pointed to it being so. But it has caught us without support or the necessary leadership to achieve them.
We are not La Gomera.
