many fronts
Casimiro Curbelo
There are so many problems, so many waterways, that sometimes you don't know what to attend to first. The bad years that we have experienced in a very short time have caused us great damage from which we are barely beginning to recover. The great economic crisis of 2008 left terrible consequences of sudden poverty, of families who lost their savings and their homes and of thousands of self-employed people who closed the business because it was unsustainable. The economic crisis experienced with the pandemic has hit us when the ship was beginning to recover from the terrible storm we had experienced. In a matter of less than a decade we have survived two economic crashes unparalleled in recent history.
Despite the public and private efforts that have been made in these unfortunate times, poverty continues to be a scourge that hits our consciences. The only way to put an end to it is to create decent, well-paid work; that there are prosperous and efficient companies; that improves the productivity and competitiveness of our economic sectors. This Government has done everything possible and impossible to save the self-employed and SMEs of the Islands in the worst moments of the last crisis. We have distributed aid for more than one billion to save the productive fabric of tourism and commerce, from which we live. And the funds allocated to social aid have multiplied, the life preserver that must be thrown into the water to prevent people from drowning in these times of extreme difficulties.
However, things don't quite work out as we would like. The main export product of the Canary Islands, bananas, is losing the national market in favor of foreign bananas. I don't even want to think about what the loss of this crop would be like, which would affect thousands of families in our Community, because it would have even greater effects than what happened when we lost most of the tomato exports from the islands, which went to Morocco because there they were given better conditions and they were able to produce at lower costs. The digital divide in the case of our islands is another major alarm signal: it affects 30% of Canarian households. But to a greater extent to those who most need an opportunity in this new world; households in severe exclusion, of which 44% do not have access to the digital world.
We have many cauldrons on fire; but the fire is out. There are things we have to discuss, agreements we have to reach and decisions we have to defend. Something must be done so that the Canary Islands stop being behind Spain in salaries. Let us firmly unite to ensure that the subsidy for travel between the Canary Islands and the rest of Spain does not become an abuse with the citizens of these islands and a fraud with the rest of the Spaniards. A recent study by an associate professor at the ULPGC denounces that peninsular travelers have to face prohibitive prices, which distance the Archipelago from the rest of the State, which also has an impact on spending per visitor, which has fallen: if you spend a lot on the trip, there is less budget left for shopping and leisure.
In the face of pessimistic predictions, tourism has endured. The celebration of FITUR this year raises the best expectations, always conditioned by the fragile stability that the world is experiencing today and the problems of a global economy. If everything continues without scares, throughout this year we will have inexcusable duties, such as activating the Citizen Income to improve the amount and effectiveness of aid to the most vulnerable, but we should not neglect the rigorous analysis of the threats that threaten us in the short term and that affect agricultural exports, connectivity and the future of our economy. Human beings do not live on bread alone; nor tourism.
