Enrique Arriaga’s sudden candidacy for mayor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the local elections next May is a synthesis of gambler cynicism and ridiculous insignificance that is difficult to overcome. Yes in the rest of Spain citizens it has become a tragicomedy about to lower the curtain, in the Canary Islands it has been an increasingly grotesque and worse sung operetta. To refer only to Tenerife, the figures of Ciudadanos have gone over to Casimiro’s caciquil and social democratic insularism curbelo (Teresa Berástegui’s four years of paid vacations in the Vice-Ministry of Tourism) will be incorporated into socialist lists (Matide Zambudio by Solomonic decision, that is, taken at a lunch with salmon salad, by Patricia Hernández), they have entered with a vote of gold in the government of the CC and the PP (Evelyn Alonso in Santa Cruz de Tenerife) or they have camped in the vicinity of the coalition members to see if they will be thrown out, as in the case of the deputy Vidina Espino. Whether some have left the party and others have been kicked out is more or less indifferent. In reality Ciudadanos was never anything (neither politically, nor organizationally nor programmatically) in the Canary Islands. It always worked as a mosaic of clubs of friends and cronies and never made a decision of its own outside of the national governing bodies, which, however, they did not fucking pay attention to after the 2019 elections. Each one invented instructions, guidelines, endorsements or challenges. Perhaps the exception that acted with rigor and coherence was Alfredo Gómez, councilor of the La Laguna town hall, and for this very reason he has been the only one viciously persecuted, in addition to enduring in plenary session the insults and promises of punches from the heroic progressives who They misrule the municipality.
Arriaga has not had those problems. He has not had them because the arithmetic of the electoral results was conducive to him and he immediately agreed with whom he had to agree, that is, with the one who offered him the most, Pedro Martín. Nor was it exclusively a matter of fights and status, but of a compensation macerated for decades. A technical official of the Tenerife Council, Arriaga never received the Olympic recognition that, in his modest opinion, he deserved from Ricardo Melchior or Carlos Alonso. “I have thrown them out,” he repeated proudly through the corridors in the summer of 2019, “not the PSOE, but me.” Of course, in these almost four years in office, Arriaga has done absolutely nothing at all in the Cabildo. The Gobi desert is more full of initiatives, achievements, planning and management than the office of the vice president of the corporation. To be honest he hasn’t been a drag either. Pedro Martín is a Titanic in himself: a guy who believes that being president of the Cabildo is having a lot of suits, running away from the files, sticking his guts in when they take photos of him and running away to Guía de Isora at five in the afternoon. But even Martín has been astonished at Arriaga’s uselessness and has had to impose on him the insular director of Culture – who undoubtedly infected by the environment has limited himself to collecting his salary – and the insular director of Sports, who has had to resign due to an obscure and stinking matter of cars and credit cards and a false complaint against a “mediator” who, apparently, has an excellent relationship with the president.
Arriaga no longer deals with such trifles. After all, that director of Sports was not his business, but of the innumerable favors and commitments of Martín with the socialist groups. Arriaga is running for mayor to flee from the Cabildo, because in May he could not get to be a councilor even by chance. Being a councilor, on the other hand, is simpler and cheaper. And he’s always been a man who looks out for bitches.
