Those of us who believe that we must look confidently to the future to find answers that are no longer found in the past, believe that there are more than enough reasons to justify our opposition to the Canary Islands being the scenario of the search for an ancient energy source whose impact could seriously affect the most precious treasure for those of us who reside here and for the more than twelve million tourists who visit us every year.
I remember those words spoken by the deputy of the Popular Party, Esteban González Pons, in which he reproached the then socialist Government for authorizing the realization of oil explorations in the Mediterranean and, in addition, in a very poetic intervention, he referred to oil as "a dirty energy to be extinguished" and stressed that "we are not in the time of black gold but of green gold". Words that today are repeated by all his colleagues throughout the entire Mediterranean arc, led by the president of the Balearic Islands who, in an interview with Canary Television, said that "he will never ever allow explorations to be authorized in his territory".
The State Government, lacking ideas to face a future that requires solutions that involve investing in human capital and decisively betting on the knowledge economy and innovation, intends to turn its back on modernity and embark on a journey to nowhere with explorations that could lead to an economic model with disastrous consequences.
After the decade of the real estate bubble, whose consequences have been disastrous for our economy, for our institutional credibility and, above all, for millions of families, the Ministry of Industry proposes as an alternative that we embark, without protest, on an adventure with which it intends to reproduce a new bubble in both Archipelagos, but this time with the extraction of oil, whatever the consequences.
The wealth of the Canary Islands is its landscape, the privileged environment represented by its sea, the diversity of species that inhabit the waters that surround us. A space so outstanding that only those who, blinded by the greed of easy money, are unable to see that the solution that will allow us to return to the path of growth is not found in the subsoil but on the surface.
The new ideas that will help us build a consistent future, alien to the illegitimate interests of the oil industry, involve the promotion of clean energies. Cheaper energies, which generate more jobs and of much more quality. Our future involves extrapolating the experience of the island of El Hierro to the rest of the Islands and turning the Archipelago into a world laboratory for the study and development of innovative projects that we can export to other countries, especially to the African continent.
The future of the Canary Islands does not depend exclusively on tourism, much less on oil. The record in the arrival of tourists registered in 2013 and that, predictably, will be surpassed in 2014 is due, in large part, to the crisis that is experienced in the countries of North Africa. And we cannot lose sight of the fact that this situation of growth, which could be temporary, should be used as a springboard to reinvent our economic model.
We must take advantage of the pull that our economy will experience in the coming years –if things don't go wrong - so that young unemployed and uneducated people acquire new skills and recycle themselves in subjects that allow them to rejoin the labor market. We have to further qualify our tourist offer, not only insisting on the rehabilitation of degraded spaces but also introducing new offers of leisure, culture and sport so that the Canary Islands are an attractive destination for young people from European countries. Sustainable energies are an unavoidable objective, as is the advance in the Canary Islands as a world astronomical research center or our dream of being the commercial platform with Africa.
After the urban frenzy, whose traces are indelible on our coastline, we cannot make the same mistake again by putting our marine environment at risk. The State Government cannot force us to be hostages of a project that is being forged in closed offices of the Paseo de la Castellana, whose file is a secret that travels without transparency between the Ministries of Industry and Environment and the oil company Repsol. Their flight forward in both Archipelagos cannot be a short-term project that will put at risk two exceptional territories that we are obliged to deliver immaculate to those generations that we have already condemned in advance to pay the debt of our mistakes.
There is a possible Canary Islands for which we must fight, a modern Canary Islands, with an educational system closely linked to the new economy, with a sustainable welfare state. That is the race we must join, the global race for knowledge. Let's not throw it overboard by launching ourselves into the unknown.
Ana Oramas, deputy of Coalición Canaria
