The mayor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, José Manuel Bermúdez, expressed his “surprise” this morning that the capital of Tenerife and co-capital of the Canary Islands had not been included among the cities proposed by the Government of Spain to host meetings of the European Union during the second half of 2023, coinciding with the Spanish presidency of the EU. In this list, out of 25 cities, there is Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, which shares the capital of the Canary Islands with Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
José Manuel Bermúdez explained that today he is going to send a letter to Moncloa to express his “rejection that Santa Cruz de Tenerife has not been proposed as one of the 25 cities that will host meetings of the European Union in 2023, explaining the reasons why those that our capital, and co-capital of the Archipelago, deserve to be on that list”.
“This proposal shows the lack of absolute knowledge of the reality of the Islands, of the different sensitivities and of the need to maintain the balance between the different territories that make it up”, explained Bermúdez.
The mayor has also demanded that the President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, “from the same party that has prepared the aforementioned list, present the same proposal in Madrid and that, as president of all the Canary Islands, guarantee territorial balance in the Islands”. “This list”, he added, “demonstrates the lack of capacity and the little weight that the Socialist Party of Tenerife has, not only in the Canary Islands, but in Madrid, as they have been unable to make it understood that an exquisite territorial balance prevails in the Canary Islands , embodied in our Statute of Autonomy, which has been the basis of our coexistence since its approval”.
The information sent by the Presidency of the Government of Spain and made public today, July 6, indicates that the list includes 25 cities and that the contents of each meeting will be agreed upon in a future meeting with the Autonomous Communities.
José Manuel Bermúdez has expressed his confidence that this decision “will be corrected immediately” and that the rest of the Canary Islands institutions, “especially the Cabildo Insular de Tenerife and the Presidency of the Government of the Canary Islands, both led by the same Socialist Party that has left Santa Cruz off this list, be able to modify this situation in the coming days.”
