Sometimes, the words others hurl as an accusation end up becoming a mirror. An uncomfortable mirror, yes, but also revealing. In recent times, I have heard, time and again, that my interventions, my concerns, my way of expressing myself as a proud Canarian, using our popular speech, in addition to my denunciations, make me a "populist." And I have had to ask myself what this word really means when it is so easily thrown by those who feel annoyed by what I say in every interview or in every intervention in the Canary Islands Parliament plenary defending Lanzarote, or defending something as valuable as public healthcare, where I always request reports and data beforehand to speak with rigor each time I take the floor, without arguments written by advisors, and with the language of truth, the one that everyone understands beyond the hemicycle.
If being a populist, according to those who point it out to me every day, including members of groups that support the government, allied media, or annoyed collectives, means believing that public healthcare is not a luxury but an inalienable pillar of a just society, then yes, perhaps I am a populist. If it is populism to demand that mental health cease to be a footnote in budgets, that waiting times do not dehumanize, that those who suffer find helping hands and not closed doors, then, yes, I am a populist. If it is populism to ask that Lanzarote receive the resources it deserves, that it not be the eternally abandoned, the ugly duckling in investments; that distance does not become oblivion; that our towns, our neighborhoods, and our families have the same right to a dignified life as anywhere else in the archipelago, then I wear that label with pride.
Because if defending what is ours, what is tangible, what is small but valuable, what has more than a hundred years of history and beats in the memory of those who came before us, means confronting the power and interests of those who prefer the immediate shine of unlimited development, then yes, I am a populist. If taking the side of a people fighting to preserve their identity is populism; if questioning the hotel encroaching on the shore is populism; if raising my voice for a more sustainable, more balanced, and more human island is populism, then I accept the term with serenityBecause, in the end, what some call populism is nothing more than affection. Affection for a land that I don't want to see turned into a showcase. Affection for an island that deserves a future, that deserves to become our home, but also our memory. Affection for a way of life that not everyone understands, but that for many of us who are part of Nueva Canarias Lanzarote means everything. And if they call all that populism, then yes, "my dear," I am a populist and I am not ashamed.