We only ask for justice and equality
Casimiro Curbelo
President of the Cabildo of La Gomera and spokesperson for ASG in the Parliament of the Canary Islands
The hallmark of Agrupación Socialista Gomera is the commitment to our island. But at the very basis of our convictions lies the feeling of sharing with the other two “Green Islands” the same reality that has never been fully understood in the history of the Canary Islands.
The construction of Autonomy left the five non-capital islands orphaned of institutional influence. The Canary Islands, which have historically protested so much against the evils of centralism in Spain, did not hesitate to practice their own version of the “concentration of power” that was distributed, without the slightest problem and without any objection, between the two large islands and the two large metropolitan areas.
The subsequent history is not only not alien to this reality, but is a consequence of it. Where do young people who want to study a profession or a university degree go to live? Where do those who want to work in industry or services go? The non-capital islands have suffered a permanent population drain that has had no choice but to travel to the large urban centers. This is how the large metropolitan areas of Tenerife and Gran Canaria grew, with the contribution of Gomeros, Herreños, Palmeros, Majoreros and Conejeros who wanted to find there what they did not have on their islands: a future.
Tourism development came to change everything. The sun and sand model defined the birth of a new economy. Sometimes brutal in their growth rates. And four islands launched massive construction of hotels and apartments; to the urbanization, not always successful, of many of its coasts, and to the creation of an emporium that has attracted millions of visitors.
The population evolution of the islands is a consequence of these processes, institutional and economic, and the reflection of the structural deficits that the Archipelago drags regarding the extra costs of double insularity and inequality. In this land there are two Canary Islands that go at different speeds and an enormous gap has been created in the quality of public services, in the cost of living and in the opportunities to which some Canary Islanders can aspire and others cannot. If we do nothing to reverse this reality, the gap will become an unbridgeable abyss.
The three Green Islands, La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro, suffer from economic overruns and lack of opportunities that have produced permanent depopulation. Proposing specific measures for these three islands, whose model of life and development is completely different from the others, is not only an obligation, it is an imperative of social justice.
In a century where technology allows people to work in many professions from any corner of the planet, creating a tax incentive for earned income in these three “Green Islands” is a wonderful tool to attract a new population interested in those tax advantages. And to do so we do not need permission from Madrid, but our own will. The Personal Income Tax, which taxes income from work, also has a regional section and its bonus depends on the Canary Islands themselves.
In recent years, the different governments of the Canary Islands have paid greater attention to the three Green Islands with special measures adapted to their reality. It would be unfair to deny it. There is the adaptation of the Tourism Law or the Canary Islands Development Fund. But this is nothing more than the coherence that the Canary Islands must have with itself. If Europe has included in the Treaty of Lisbon the necessary adaptation of the Union's policies with the outermost territories, which need special measures adapted to their special reality, how can this other "double insularity" suffered by the Green Islands not be recognized in the Canary Islands?
We do not want a model of massive tourism growth. We don't want to destroy our environment. We do not even intend to alter the institutional balance that has cost so much effort to create in the Canary Islands. We simply want our three islands to be treated like Spain treated the Canary Islands with the REF Law. Or how Madrid treats the residents of Ceuta and Melilla, for whom it deducts 60% of the tax on labor income, and whose number of inhabitants far exceeds that of our Green Islands.
