"When dawn breaks, all the waters of the Atlantic awaken, and among them there is a people that was born free and today hopes to rebuild the new era of the islands on the wound, to remove the fences from the landscape and see it free as before...." (Taburiente).
Canarian Identity, objectively, is the result of objective factors: geography, history, race, culture and language. Our location in the world and the African and archipelagic reality, the peculiar history, the specific miscegenation (Africa, Europe and America) that has forged a Canarian culture and speech different from Castilian.
The Canary Islands are a people that was born free and was forcibly deprived of the free exercise of government:
"The gueldera in Acentejo and the bait in Candelaria, first came the cross and then the muskets, the brave Bentor collapsed through Tigaiga and the verdinos were silent, and the chácaras were silenced, and the mocanes bled, and the barley dried up, and the bees left and the goats were frightened away. There remained only the courage of an island and of a race and an infinite love: to be born, to live and to die without Castilian chains" (Pedro Guerra).
The Canarian people have the right to decide, the RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION. A Right based on the following objective arguments:
1. Historical and geographical arguments.
The existence of a Canarian people, who arrived thousands of years before the Christian era and who lived in this land before the conquest of the Canary Islands by Castile. XV century:
"Call me guanche, son of volcanoes and lavas, to hold my forehead high, to have a heart made of freedoms,..., to have the sea that separates me from everything that I do not want and that binds me" (Carlos Pinto Grote).
A fragmented territory, about 1,500 kilometers away from Spain, confirms the separation between colony and metropolis. A race of African origin mixed with Europeans and Americans, and a Libyco-Berber, Latin-Canarian and Castilian language make up an ethnic group, a speech, a culture and an autochthonous society: folklore, poetry, dances, traditional games and sports, clothing, customs, gastronomy..., different from the Spanish State.
Its own political structure with peculiar Island Councils, a differentiated economic organization, first with the Free Ports and then with the R.E.F, and a Canarian society characterized by its universality, miscegenation, tolerance, solidarity and peaceful coexistence (On March 12, 1986, the Canary Islands voted NO to enter the military structure of NATO).
2. Ideological arguments.
The support of an international context of ideas based on the UN Decolonization Process, Human Rights and the Right to Self-Determination (1941-61), such as:
- The signing of the Atlantic Charter (Joint Declaration of the United States, Roosevelt, and the United Kingdom, Churchill. August 14, 1941) which in its article 3 states: "They respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they want to live, and they wish to see sovereign rights and the free exercise of government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them".
- UN Resolution 1514, (XV), "Magna Carta of Decolonization", (December 14, 1960) which declares that all peoples have the right to self-determination, and that measures must be taken to transfer power to colonized peoples, without conditions and without repression.
- UN Resolution 1541, which establishes which peoples were entitled to the right of self-determination, based on the existence of ethnic and cultural differences, and the geographical separation between the colony and the metropolis.
- And the creation, by the United Nations (UN), of the Special Committee on Decolonization (The Special Committee of 24),
legitimize the Canary Islands, as a colony with ethnic, cultural and geographical differences from the metropolis (Spain) that wishes to restore its sovereign rights and its free exercise of government, which was taken from it by force, and that has the right to self-determination.
3. National Identity Arguments.
The personal references and the marked dates of the Canarian National Unity:
- August 15: Weñesmed. Ancestral celebration of the Amazigh culture.
"Agoñe yacoron iyatzahaña chacoñamet" (I swear by the bone of the one who brought me into this world that I will maintain the traditions of my people until the day I die).
(Canarian Song Workshop).
- Secundino Delgado Rodríguez (1867-1912). Father of Canarian nationalism.
- December 23, 1878. Publication of the Poem Canarias. Nicolás Estévanez y Murphy (1838-1914).
"The homeland is a rock, the homeland is a rock, the homeland is a fountain, the homeland is a path and a hut. My homeland is not the world, my homeland is not Europe, my homeland is of an almond tree, the sweet, fresh, unforgettable shade".
- 1896. Publication of the newspaper El Guanche (Venezuela). Voice of expression of the Canarian independence movement.
- January 30, 1924. Foundation of the PNC (Canarian Nationalist Party), among others, by figures such as José Cabrera Díaz.
- 1961. Free Canary Islands Movement (María del Carmen Sarmiento, Jesús and Arturo Cantero)
- October 22, 1964: Day of the Canarian National Flag:
"The flag of my homeland has a strong pedestal in every Canarian soul, without the colonial stain." (Francisco Tarajano).
4. Legal and political arguments: International Legality.
The conquest of the Canary Islands is a crucial moment of transformation from medieval to modern structures, from European public law to classical international law. It is the debate between those who affirmed that the only legitimate society was the European imperialism of civilized States and those who defended the exercise of sovereignty of pagan societies, the basis of current decolonization.
The neuralgic center of the History of the Canary Islands has always been between two opposite poles, between colonizing domination and freedom, between Spanish centralism and the self-determination of the Canarian people.
The United Nations (UN) declared the period 2011-2020 as the Third International Decade for the elimination of colonialism, a crime against humanity that never prescribes and does not disappear with the passage of centuries. The Canary Islands meet the requirements to invoke Resolution 1514 (XV), of December 14, 1960 of the UN, and demand that the Kingdom of Spain comply with a protocol and schedule for the decolonization of our Archipelago.
Only with this minimum argumentative basis do we already have the legitimacy, the right and the responsibility to demand the RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION of the Canarian people. If we do not, history will judge us.