The Council of Tenerife Look for a national or European agency that the Island can host. According to what was known yesterday, neither the headquarters of the Spanish Space Agency nor that of the Artificial Intelligence Agency will be in Tenerife territory –but in Seville and La Coruña, respectively–, with which the plan is to continue trying. “It has not been possible despite the fact that I think Tenerife has magnificent conditions,” lamented the island president, Pedro Martín (PSOE) yesterday. «We are going to continue fighting to get the headquarters of the Volcanological Institute of Spain. We are also going to try it with the European Tourism Agency and with any other in which we believe, and I consider that there are many, that the Cabildo de Tenerife can provide infrastructures and services»he said, before referring to the fact that these can be “European or national in scope.”
The opposition took it worse. The candidate for the Presidency of the Cabildo de Tenerife de Canarian Coalition (CC), Rosa Dávila, criticized that «Tenerife is lagging behind again. The lack of leadership of the PSOE and Pedro Martín has been demonstrated once again. We are facing another bad news for the Island because we lose a great opportunity to bet on innovation and diversify our economy. The nationalist complained: “Tenerife could have become a pole of attraction for funds for development and research linked to these agencies, but we have seen how the government of Pedro Sánchez rewards two socialist mayors – Seville and La Coruña – and he forgets, once again, the people of Tenerife”, maintained the candidate from Tenerife.
The director of CC Félix Fariña also spoke about it. «Tenerife’s candidacy was made at the proposal of the Canary Coalition and was unanimously approved in July. We bet on a multi-site candidacy, similar to the European Space Agency, because we understood that a Canarian multi-site candidacy had much more strength and advantage to compete with other communities, but the PSOE did not opt for that»he remembered.
In addition, Fariña remarked that the work carried out since the previous term in the Cabildo allowed it to host either of the two agencies. «We are talking about the telecommunications networks deployed by the Cabildo, the ITER supercomputers and the support of other research institutions, such as the University of La Laguna (ULL) or the Institute of Astrophysics of Canary Islands (IAC), a space research center with a long and renowned history. Unfortunately, Tenerife continues to lag behind without anyone from the PSOE moving a finger, “he said.
Contempt for Sanchez
From the Popular Party (PP), the candidate for the Cabildo in the next elections, Lope Afonso, reacted to this news by assuring that “it shows the contempt of Pedro Sánchez towards the Canary Islands and the absolute political irrelevance of the autonomous government of Angel Victor Torres and the insular government of Pedro Martín, who have systematically submitted to the contempt that Sánchez does us ». In Afonso’s opinion, this treatment has been revealed in other areas, such as “discrimination against the Canaries in the free public transport or the continuous lack of respect for the lines established in our REF.”
«The Canaries, in general, and the people of Tenerife, in particular, are losing opportunities as long as the main institutions are governed by the Socialist Party, a compelling reason to be aware that we need a change of political course from May 2023 to place the Canary Islands and Tenerife on the map of priority policies»said the representative of the conservative formation.
The left-wing insular coalition Sí Podemos Canarias in the Cabildo de Tenerife, which for a good part of the mandate provided coverage to Martín from outside the island government, regretted that “the Island’s candidacy to host the state headquarters of the Agency has finally been ruled out Spanish Space Agency and the Artificial Intelligence Supervision Agency». The political group considered that Tenerife’s candidacy “meeted the necessary requirements to host both institutions, which we believe would have contributed to the development of our Archipelago in areas as prominent as the R&D industry and space research.”
Regarding the Spanish Space Agency, Sí Podemos Canarias defended that “it is difficult to understand that the possibility of our Island hosting this headquarters has been ruled out, since Tenerife has always been one of the best locations worldwide for space research. and astronomical, thanks to the characteristics of our land and the good visibility of the sky. Regarding the Artificial Intelligence Supervision Agency, the insular group considered that “Tenerife also has the means and resources necessary to have become the final destination of this headquarters, which, in addition, would contribute to the creation of jobs qualified, who provide added value to the economy, stable and of quality for the population of our Island, contributing to promoting a labor framework that can be accessed by all the profiles with such a high level of training that we have in Tenerife”.
Sí Podemos Canarias concluded that “the final decision of the central government to discard the candidacy of Tenerife means the loss of a great opportunity for our land to advance in the necessary modification of the labor and production model of the Archipelago, contributing to diversify it to be a reference in an area as important as science.
