Beyond the rigid discourses of the different political groups, elaborated for their parishes, what could be observed in the days that the Debate of the Canarian Nationality lasted is that there are two models of understanding (or wanting to make) the Canary Islands. Paradoxical is the fact that, in an event that is said to be the debate of "nationality", only on a few occasions were the words "country" or "nation" formulated, all of them coming from the mouth of Noemí Santana (Podemos) and Román Rodríguez (Nueva Canarias). Only the latter managed to get President Clavijo, in his turn to reply, to timidly pronounce the word "country" to refer to the archipelago.
And it is that in the Canary Islands we drag a deficit of definition of what we are, either by disagreements between the Canarian intelligentsia, which historically has needed the arbitration of Madrid to reach points of agreement, or by the instrumentalist use of the geographical reality, therefore, being island territories and being fragmented, among other considerations. The latter, in my opinion, is what has led the Canarians to be in continuous litigation, pecking, quarrels or whatever you want to call it. Geography, and cartography and the discourses that emanate from it, has been a powerful artifact to create a reality or identity that moves away from the sense of nation, since we have preferred to exalt the island, the insular territory, above the demos, of the whole of the citizenship that we configure the Canary Islands. I will present a simile that seems opportune to me.
In Ancient Greece there was a set of city-states with their own sovereignty. Although they spoke in favor of a Greek community (Hellas), mostly in war conflicts, it was by no means understood as a joint nation, but formed a cultural and ethnic group. In order for a nation to be configured in the Western way, as Anthony D. Smith explains in his work "National Identity", a series of factors need to converge: common institutions; the existence of a single code of rights and duties for all members of the community; a defined social space; and a well-defined and demarcated territory, where its members can be identified and to which they feel they belong. Thus, the Canary Islands could well fulfill the aspects of nation considered above, if it were not for the fact that the people and the territory are not congruent, that is, the "homeland" (the homeland, the cradle) does not merge mutually with the people. If in Ancient Greece a Spartan had no rights in Athens; in the Canary Islands, a Canarión will always be a Canarión even if he has lived most of his life in Lanzarote. As Juan Hernández Bravo de Laguna, Professor of Political Science at the University of La Laguna, points out, in the Canary Islands we lack "naturalization" of being Canarian in all the islands.
Although I am skeptical in considering that there is an exclusive insular identity, I cannot deny that both policies and discourses make insularity gain strength to the detriment of the common. An example, beyond the insularist rhetoric of political parties, is the management of cultural, ethnographic and archaeological heritage, in short, the history of the Canary Islands. The competition in these areas is in the hands of the Island Councils, which causes a disparity in the conservation and dissemination of the same. It can be observed explicitly in the comparison between the Risco Caído of Gran Canaria, which aspires to be a World Heritage Site, and the Zonzamas site in Lanzarote, buried for years without knowing very well what to do with it. In addition, following the thesis of Dr. in Prehistory José Farrujia de la Rosa, what has resulted from the decentralization of historical heritage is the fact that there has been an attempt to interpret the ethnographic findings differently on each island, building diverse realities from each other, such as, for example, the questioning of the homogeneity of the aboriginal people. The direct consequence of decentralizing issues of such high importance for national construction (such as the organization of the territory or the conservation of Natural Parks) to the Island Councils is that unconsciously (or aware of it) "an essential community" is being generated around the island, leaving the Autonomous Community as an organism that has little or no influence on people's lives. A community that aspires to be a nation needs to possess a certain number of common values and traditions among the population, and a high degree of centralization towards a common institution. In our case, it could well be the Government of the Canary Islands who would lead the task of being the "essential" institution of all Canarians.
It is unquestionable that Canarians feel our land, we have an implausible attachment to our islands, since, as Godfrey Baldacchino says, the islands "are platforms for the emergence of national identity and for the affirmation of cultural specificity", which makes us elaborate a mental state very connected to the territory. However, the difficulty lies in asserting that island spirit (in the sense of Nicolás Estévanez), with a national community that supersedes the insular interest. When we value that the truly important thing is the people who make up this land, the demos above the place, we can talk about nation, country, nationality or Autonomous Community. Meanwhile, we will only be a group of citizens fragmented into seven islands that do not know very well what they are, who they were and what they aspire to be. @ayoze_uam
Ayoze Corujo Hernández. Political scientist from the Autonomous University of Madrid. Master in Political Analysis from the Complutense University of Madrid.
