More than 15 years after sitting for the first time in one of the seats in Congress, Ana Oramas will make the return trip to the Islands to reinforce the Canary Coalition (CC) squad ahead of next year’s regional elections. The deputy in Cortes will lead the list of nationalists to the regional Parliament for the constituency of Tenerife. Whatever the result, Oramas herself assured yesterday that she will not return to Madrid. Her idea and that of her party is that CC, to which not a few predicted an imminent disintegration after being left out of the institutions, return to government tasks. To govern regardless of winning the elections or not, although it will always be easier, of course, if the elections are won. The nationalists will have a good part of the task done if they manage to regain leadership in Tenerife, lost in 2019 in favor of the PSOE. For this, Oramas returns, who will appear on electoral posters and advertising – at least on the island of Tenerife – alongside Fernando Clavijo, who will lead the CC list for the autonomous constituency and who will be the candidate for the presidency of the Canary Islands Government. It is the safest bet of the nationalists – at least on paper – and also the most desired by the majority of its militants, especially its militants from Tenerife. Not in vain, Oramas is for locals and strangers and for defenders and detractors one of the most recognizable faces of CC, perhaps the most recognizable.
Clavijo registers his endorsements on Monday for the candidacy for the presidency of the regional government
It was the same Oramas who announced yesterday on Radio Club Tenerife that she is returning to the politics Canaria, at least to the Canarian policy made in the Canary Islands. “I come to stay,” explained the deputy. The former mayor of San Cristóbal de La Laguna between 1999 and 2008 – her successor in office was precisely Fernando Clavijo – she will meanwhile continue in Congress, where she has been the CC spokesperson since March 2008.
With these last few months in Madrid, Oramas will be 16 years old – or almost – in the General Courts. And there won’t be one more. It was the national and island general secretaries of Tenerife, Clavijo and Francisco Linares, who proposed that he leave Congress, reserve a return ticket and reinforce the list for Parliament. She herself stated that she only set one condition before accepting the offer: not to repeat as a candidate in the general elections. “I have only set the condition that if I come it is to stay,” she stressed. In her head they are not – she assured – neither possible executive positions in the regional government nor the list to the Cabildo de Tenerife, only “return” to parliamentary politics in the Autonomous Chamber.
It must be specified, yes, that Oramas candidacy is at the moment unofficial but not official. It will be the CC executive in Tenerife that proposes the list to Parliament, which must then approve the island’s political council. However, the party’s internal procedures are reduced in this case to a mere formality.
Before the nationalists formalize Oramas’s candidacy for Parliament on the list for Tenerife, that is, before the lists for the island constituencies, CC will formalize Fernando Clavijo’s candidacy for the presidency. Another procedure. It is almost impossible to find the slightest crack in the ranks of the Coalition in relation to the figure of its secretary general. The senator for the Autonomous Community, who already presided over the regional Executive in the previous legislature, not only has the almost absolute support of the CC national political council, but also has the majority support of all the island councils. The nationalist will register on Monday the endorsements that support his candidacy at the Coalition headquarters in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Already on Friday, the 30th, the party’s national political council will meet in Adeje to vote on the proposal of its general secretary, which will go ahead by acclamation. It will come later, into October, the turn of the lists to Parliament for the different constituencies –Clavijo will go to the regional one– and the candidacies for the Cabildos, with some unknowns to be cleared up that are not exactly minor. Above all in Tenerife, where Carlos Alonso has been discarded –or rather self-discarded–, CC will have to spin fine in the search for the name that will compete with the socialist Pedro Martín for the island presidency. The name of another face with a long history behind her is the one that has sounded the most in recent days in gossip and corridors: Rosa Dávila.
main fishing ground
With the stability that Pablo Rodríguez, deputy in the Autonomous Chamber and island secretary, has given to the party in Gran Canaria, where the nationalists hope to finally gain the ground that would correspond to them due to their weight in regional politics, in CC they are aware that the electoral victory in Tenerife –his main and historic voting ground– is almost a sine qua non condition to govern. Ana Oramas herself pointed out yesterday that the important thing is not so much winning the elections as “having the best teams to govern and help the Canary Islands.” But this does not prevent the results in Tenerife from being, if not definitive, then definitive. Coalition, said the deputy in Cortes, will have after the 2023 elections “the opportunity to govern again.”
The spokeswoman for the nationalists in Congress will make the return trip 16 years later
Oramas predicted that “difficult times” are coming for Spain in general and the Canary Islands in particular, and added that although in the political sphere you can lend a hand equally from the Cortes or from the Parliament of the region, perhaps “the time has come » to «contribute» from the particular hemicycle of the Autonomous Community. In this sense, the congresswoman was convinced that she can still do a lot for the CC project: “I think I have a lot to contribute to the team.”
