Last week the islands were hit by a storm that brought with it a good few liters of water and put the entire citizenry on red alert. The sky turned gray and the hurricane-force winds, of almost one hundred kilometers per hour in some places, wreaked havoc on homes, businesses, fields and material goods. A meteorological situation that many compared to the famous "Delta". But after the storm comes the calm and you can see the damage and defects, the sun comes out and with it a rainbow that puts the finishing touch to the flood and gives way to the quantification of damages and lost goods. Well, in the political sphere, we have also quantified the damages and we have observed some things that the storm took away.
While Rajoy was trying to appease the Catalan independence spirits with a somewhat secessionist strategy - he took shelter in the heat of the stove at the popular headquarters - in Lanzarote the winds took away the few illusions of renewal that we possessed. I am not saying this because of the skeptical illusions we had in the rainwater works in the capital, pharaonic works that should have solved the historical problem that keeps a city in suspense for generations, I am saying it because of the regeneration illusions that they were selling us as the latest in politics. On Sunday the primary elections to the Cabildo and the Arrecife City Council were held by the PSOE, the candidates chosen by the members in the new Sanchista stage, were Mr. JosJuan Cruz for the Cabildo and JosMontelongo for Arrecife, without a doubt the storm wreaked havoc!
The political-democratic regeneration that has been swarming for some time and that is dressed as the approach of the new socialist dome, has not served to make the old "caste" of rabbits step aside and open the windows of the committees moistened by years and years of closure to lime and singing. JosJuan Cruz is already an old acquaintance of the island caciquism, a politician who is devoted to his public will, it does not matter a position as Mayor in Tas or an organic position within the party, that if he has to be representing the insular interests in favor of the citizens, he will also oppose the presidency of the first insular institution. And what about Mr. Montelongo, great lieutenant mayor of the capital of all the people of Lanzarote, where his political actions and professional skills have had to convince the socialist militants, because if not, I cannot explain what is the reason that makes society continue to bet on politically and judicially questioned leaders, who reflect the opposite of what today all civil society demands, a change from the old to the new.
As if it were a butterfly effect, the post-storm rainbow has brought some casualties in the socialist militancy of the island. While the general secretary of the PSOE in Lanzarote, Dolores Corujo, was trying to convince us that the primary elections that took place based the process of recovering citizen confidence -Montelongo and Cruz as pillars of confidence- , the former councilor of Arrecife and former regional deputy Andrns Fuentes presented his resignation, which later, in a populist eagerness, was joined by the resignation of the young Montelongo declaring discrepancies in the actions that are carried out within the Lanzarote socialists. Maybe I am wrong and my precocious political intuition deceives me, but these casualties correspond to a disaffection with the ruling dome of the PSOE in Lanzarote, where Dolores Corujo has been in charge of attracting all eyes to her person, all the influential policies of the island pass through the filter of the batatera Mayoress and that, although it is denied, is not akin to other positions that are isolated from the media scene.
Storms can bring the necessary water for life to emerge and nourish the fields, but sometimes they are phenomena that cause irreparable damage. The one that was silent on the island is not of borage, it is of an authentic storm of discouragement that has entered the population. This is still the same, shit up to the ears! is shouted in the streets, the rabbit farmers no longer believe or want to believe more, the political chiefs do not join the change and so it is very difficult for a hypothetical regeneration to force a transformation. The windows are closed and propped up on an island where change is synonymous with attack on the elite, where judicial proceedings juggle to investigate, corruption is covered up by media bought by those who commit crimes and political parties that act as closed nuclei, all this despite the constant demands of a population that is tired of being taken as the sharecroppers of the old landowners. The wind took away trees, facades and planks, but it also took away the illusion of change.
*Ayoze Corujo Hernndez is a student of Political Science and Public Administration at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
