
The Government of Ukraine launched a campaign on March 28 to ask countries to change the name of the streets where the Russian embassies and consulates are located and call them Ukraine Street. An initiative that has not yet been carried out in Spain, but that cities such as Santa CruzAlthough the Russian consulate, which is in Arona, is not located there, it is willing to carry it out, becoming the first city in the country to do so.
Yesterday, the mayor of the capital, José Manuel Bermúdez, confirmed to DIARIO DE AVISOS that it is an action that they will carry out as soon as they can. “There are streets that are named after rivers, countries, and it is logical that Ukraine has a street in the city, it would be a street that honors the Ukrainian people,” said the councilman.
“If we build a street, it will be for the country,” he continued, “but above all, thinking about what the people of Ukraine are suffering. The images of these days, of the people murdered in the street, deserve worldwide recognition and Santa Cruz has always had that vocation for solidarity, the same that we can show in the streets with that gesture.
The request was made at the end of March by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and focused on the 53 headquarters of the Russian consulates that are located in 34 countries, including Spain, with two in Madrid (Calle Velázquez, 155 and Calle Joaquín Costa, 33). ) and one in Barcelona (Avda. Pearson, 34).
The department led by Dimitro Kuleba shared the request for the addresses that host Russian dependencies to be called, in unison, Ukraine Street.
“This would be a simple but significant act of symbolic support for the brave Ukrainian people who defend the values of freedom and democracy from one of the most powerful military powers in the world”, collects the convening website, which speaks of support “in spirit” .
Ukraine asks to rename roads around the world with Russian embassies as Ukraine Street
Some countries have already taken the step. For example, on March 10, Tirana, the capital of Albania, renamed the name of the street on which the Russian delegation is located as Freedom for Ukraine. On March 3, the street in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, which houses the Russian embassy, was renamed Street of Ukrainian Heroes. The latest city to join the initiative is Prague, which this week has changed the name of the street where the Russian embassy is located to call it Ukrainian Heroes.
In the Canary Islands, there are two Russian consulates, one in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, on José Franchy Roca street, in the capital of Gran Canaria, and another in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, on Antonio Domínguez avenue, in the El Camisón urbanization , in the southern municipality of Arona. In the latter, the City Council has not yet assessed the possibility of executing that change of name of the street that Ukraine requests as an act of support.
In any case, it takes a previous administrative process, which the City Council must execute in the event that the name of the avenue changes.
A website collects signatures for cities to join the change
In the page www.uastreet.world, Ukraine informs about the steps to take to request the change of name of the streets where the consulates are located. Thus, it invites users to locate their city and sign a petition hosted on the Change.org portal for the modification to take place, or register a new petition with the city in which they want there to be a street for Ukraine, in addition to urge them to contact the town councils directly. In the case of Spain, for the headquarters of the consulate in Barcelona, 200 signatures had been registered, while for that of the embassy in Madrid, there were another 174.