SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 27 May. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Parliament of the Canary Islands paid tribute this Thursday afternoon to the 113 Canarian deputies of the first 40 years of parliamentarism in the islands in an act that highlighted the important role of each one of them in the construction of self-government in the Canary Islands.
The act was presided over by the president of the Chamber, Gustavo Matos, and the rest of the members of the Table –the first vice president by videoconference, Esther González, the second vice president, Rosa Dávila, the first secretary, Jorge González, and the second secretary, Light Reveron–.
Speakers included the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, as the first female president of the Parliament of the Canary Islands; Dolores Palliser as the only deputy in the first and second legislatures; Australia Navarro as the first female president of a parliamentary group; Belén Allende as the author of a bill on equality that reached Congress in 2004; Melodie Mendoza as the youngest deputy of these forty years at the time of taking possession of her seat – 27 years and 15 days – and Carmen Hernández as the first deputy from NC in the Parliament of the Canary Islands.
In his speech, Matos affirmed that these women have sown a path from which the fruits are being harvested today.
“They have done it with their dedication, with their perseverance, with their courage in frankly difficult times, with their deep democratic conviction. Today, when there are those who seek to put the conquered rights in check, let us continue to be champions of democratic coexistence, of the powerful advances in equality between women and men”, he commented.
For her part, Carolina Darias expressed her gratitude “to all the deputies who paved the way, who have helped us to travel along the most exciting path, that of equality without limits” and stressed that the advances made by women “are advances for The humanity”.
LOLI PALLISER, FIRST WOMAN IN THE CAMERA
Dolores Palliser also valued the enormous work done in these forty years.
“To think that I was alone for eight years is tremendous, but in this Parliament I lived through very interesting, wonderful moments. We started from scratch, we built autonomy and everything was still to be done, but everything worked and with consensus on the main laws,” he said.
Australia Navarro remarked that these forty years of autonomy “have been a faithful exponent” of the result of the determination and decisions of women.
“We have gone from the loneliness of Loli Palliser in the first and second legislatures to today representing 43 percent of the Chamber,” he said.
Navarro recalled that in the career that a woman builds “there is not much room for selfishness, the path to success for a woman is not written in a straight line, but with many curves and stops”, and it is not reached “with same forces.
In this sense, Belén Allende stressed that the cohesion of women “is the only way” to continue “advancing towards full citizenship” where they participate in equal conditions in all spaces.
The deputy recalled that the task as parliamentarians “is to make things change.”
Melodie Mendoza agreed with this idea, emphasizing the common goal of “building a Canary Islands designed by women and men to have totally feminist islands” and defended that women can “hold positions of high responsibility in the political and private spheres”.
Likewise, Carmen Hernández opted for “once and for all accepting a broader conception of female empowerment.” “We want to leave a mark on the way of doing politics in the Canary Islands. Together we are helping to write the history of political life on the islands and in this Parliament,” she said.
The act began with the musical interpretation of ‘Mararía’, by the Canarian author Pedro Guerra, performed by Fran Yanes on timple and the soprano Carmen Acosta and then they performed, at different moments of the act, ‘Siete Islas’ and, finally, the canary anthem
The deputies of these ten legislatures received a gift from the members of the Bureau as recognition and the tribute ended with a photo of all the deputies attending before the main facade of the Parliament of the Canary Islands.
The act began with the applause of all the attendees in memory of the former nationalist deputy José Miguel González, who died this Thursday.
VOICE OF THE WOMEN OF THE EIGHT ISLANDS
In his speech, Gustavo Matos recalled that the journey of this institution began at the end of 1982 with a Provisional Parliament with three deputies among its seats.
“As an average of the ten legislatures that have elapsed to date, the presence of female deputies is around 27 percent in the Parliament of the Canary Islands, that is, just over a quarter,” he indicated, adding that in these four decades, in There have been governments in the Canary Islands where there has not been a single councilor and 32 years have had to pass for a woman to preside over the Chamber.
“Today I want to underline the fundamental role that all of you have played to make women visible, in politics of course, but also in all those areas where you have been the ones who, thanks to political and parliamentary action, have given women a voice. all the women on each of the eight islands,” said
