The tide is mixed between the provincial federations of brotherhoods of Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the general director of Fisheries, Carmelo Dorta. so much that The fishermen have demanded his resignation in writing, and if this does not occur, they have asked the regional councilor, Alicia Vanoostende, to dismiss him immediately. Both federations accuse Dorta of paralyzing throughout this legislature projects that are of vital importance for the sector and of dividing the collective in the Islands. For this reason, each one presented a document on May 19 in which they demanded their departure due to the loss of confidence in their work.
“Relations are broken and we are not going to meet with him for anything else,” says Víctor Díaz, president of the Provincial Federation of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, who insists that over the last three years none of the problems plaguing the sector have been resolved. “We have not been able to resolve the issue of tuna quotas, we have been waiting for years to resolve the issue of beaconing and geolocation of passive gear in the Canary Islands and, also, I wanted to raise the minimum sizes without having a viable and logical study in the to lean on,” he emphasizes. In addition, he points out that the group he represents has registered twenty documents with different requests that have never been answered.
The fishermen assure that the relations “are broken” and they will not meet with him again
The two federations acknowledge that the straw that broke the camel’s back occurred a few weeks ago in Madrid, where representatives of the group traveled to meet with the Secretary General of Fisheries of the Ministry, Alicia Villauriz. The objective was to try to unblock several issues that had been paralyzed for some time, one of them being the Management Plan of NASA and the cazonal in Gran Canaria. “There they told us that they were paralyzed because the regional director wanted it that way,” says Gabriel Jiménez, president of the Provincial Federation of Brotherhoods of Las Palmas. It was then that “we ended up realizing that the support of the director has been very poor in these years.”
JIménez emphasizes that he has been holding back this request for almost a year, which many of his colleagues have already claimed. “I have supported him in the decisions he has made, but as the months have gone by things have gone from bad to worse” and the work he does “is no longer valid for the sector.”
And so they communicated it to both the counselor, Alicia Vanoostende, and the deputy counselor of the Primary Sector, Álvaro de la Bárcena, in a meeting held two weeks ago, in which they insisted that the dialogue with the general director of Fisheries was broken. «Today, any management that we want to do, I don’t know who it will be with because all the lines are cut, “Jiménez stressed.. A delicate situation since it ensures that the sector is in one of its worst moments, after the pandemic, and in which projects of vital importance are being developed, such as the future Law on Sustainable Fisheries and Fisheries Research, which is being processed in Madrid .
“We are asking for his resignation due to his incompetence,” maintains Ricardo Ortega, senior patron of the Arguineguín Brotherhood, “In three years of legislature he has done nothing but increasingly disunite the sector”, so “we cannot put our future in the hands of this person.”
The two provincial federations accuse Dorta of taking more into account the Regional Federation of Brotherhoods, a group created in 2015 with the aim of unifying the sector, which for them has only done the opposite. “He bets on the Regional Federation that is not doing the job for which it was created,” values Jiménez, who insists that the provincial ones, which are older, must continue to be counted on, since “we represent almost 90% of the brotherhoods of the Canary Islands.
Recreational fishing clubs also asked for his resignation a year ago due to lack of support
“With this person at the head of the General Directorate, we did not reach any consensus or get anything done,” emphasizes Víctor Díaz, who maintains that in these two weeks they have not received any response from the Ministry of Agriculture.
«I don’t know who else has to ask for his resignation for him to leave”, he points out, since he remembers that The recreational fishing clubs also asked for their cessation a year ago, due to their lack of support for this sector after the Royal Decree proposal to regulate the practice of sport fishing was made public, under much more restrictive conditions than the current ones.
