Sí se puede, Lanzarote en Pie, Nueva Canarias, Podemos Canarias, Izquierda Unida Canaria, and Movimiento Sumar Canarias advocated this May 30th, Día de Canarias, for an Archipelago that decides its model and future “without tutelage”. “We still have time to decide another direction. To make the Canary Islands not just a place to celebrate, but a place to sow the future and put down roots,” they assure in a joint statement.

The formations warn of the “environmental degradation that the islands are suffering and the progressive disappearance of natural heritage, due to mercantilist and demographic pressure on the territory and institutional neglect.” They point out that this also means “the loss of a part of our living memory, of the emotional landscape that unites us to this land.”

The parties insist that “Canary Islands deserve pride, shared memory, encounter, and community,” but raise the need to ask themselves, “What Canary Islands are being celebrated? Which one is being lost?” They emphasize that culture is “living memory” and identity “is not preserved by exhibiting it, but by living it,” especially when those who inhabit it can “build their future here.”

They criticize that urban pressure and touristification have occupied spaces that were previously for community life, transforming historic neighborhoods into areas for the holiday market and expelling residents. “While this happens and roots and tradition are celebrated, many people can no longer stay where they were born,” they state, alluding to families struggling to pay rent and young people emigrating due to the impossibility of staying.

They denounce an “increasingly evident fracture between the showcase Canary Islands celebrated by institutions and the reality in which a large part of us who inhabit it live.” They consider that this gap is only repaired when it is accepted that “there is no social justice without environmental justice and that protecting the territory is protecting the future.”

In the opinion of these organizations, self-government must go beyond institutional structure, encompassing daily and permanent sovereignty to decide the economic, environmental, social, or energy model. They defend the right to live with dignity, guarantee housing, care for common goods, and defend the territory against speculation.

They conclude by wishing for a Canary Islands where youth can build a life project, where natural and cultural heritage is protected, and identity does not become a commodity. “Identity is where people can stay, where dignity exists, and where it is still possible to imagine a common future,” they affirm, insisting that “there will be no dignified future for this land without social justice, without environmental justice, and without real self-government.”

Therefore, the different left-wing organizations in the Canary Islands share “the same certainty”: “the problems are shared, and the response must be shared. Facing them requires unity.” “Loving the Canary Islands means defending every day the right to live here and care for what is ours without excluding anyone. It means building a common project among those of us who inhabit it,” they conclude, reiterating that “we still have time to decide another direction.”