At noon today, Saturday, it is summoned in Los Cristianos, south of Tenerifea demonstration that under the motto Canarias is no longer a paradise will demand “a change of model” and that is raised not only as an act of denunciation, but as a call to attention to the political parties one week away from the celebration of the regional and local elections. The organizers include two veteran environmental forces (Ben Magec and ATAN) and several collectives and platforms, such as Salvar La Tejita and Salvar el Puertito. The objective is to gather at least two thousand people after the “important victories” obtained in recent years by “a citizenry jaded by the destruction of the territory and the increase in the cost of life.”
The Canary Islands is no longer a paradise. Surely. But when did such a misfortune occur? A century ago, in 1923 let’s say, was the Canary Islands still a paradise? That miserable and hungry country, with terrible connections with the world and between the islands, with horrifying illiteracy rates and a life expectancy of less than sixty years and in which pneumonia, appendicitis or even an oral infection could kill you, was a paradise garden? I suspect that the vast majority of islanders today – including the protesters – would not survive more than three days in any virgin paradise. For a developed society, collective well-being does not consist in maintaining a miraculously intact set of ecosystems, but in preserving and, where appropriate, revising democratically legitimized institutions, regulations and rules, in creating and promoting universal public services, in guaranteeing communications and mobility, in which competitive companies offer good salaries and retirement pensions allow a dignified old age. The country is overwhelmed by structural problems, physical and symbolic limits, weaknesses, contradictions. We certainly need tourism, but it is no longer a guarantee of economic progress and its negative effects –environmental aggression, gentrification, inequality, ballast to economic diversification– are obvious. But no canary wants to go back to 1923. If they want, more provocatively, no canary wants to go back to 1993. Paradise always happened before, in a mythical or mythologized past. Or even more emphatically, as Borges said, there are no more paradises than the lost ones.
In what can be called, somewhat scenographically, the Canarian environmental movement, a new phenomenon is taking place. This occurs above all in Tenerife, where the Cuna del Alma luxury development has been described as an apocalyptic catastrophe, when the Salto de Chira power station entails a much more extensive and brutal destruction in the Arguineguín ravine and does not cause half of the protests and the commotion that the south of Tenerife. The novelty in ecological resistance is the independence entryism. For the youngest or most clueless, a technique used by some Trotskyists who infiltrated large socialist or social democratic parties to control their agendas, redirect their strategies, inject their rhetoric, was known as entryism. The term made a fortune. The independentistas –some from Azarug and from more recent platforms– have found a niche in the environmental protest to disseminate their proposals and wave their flags, and have promoted supposedly micropolitical actions, such as approaching a meeting of hoteliers, impersonating journalists and at the opportune moment throw insults and insults. In today’s demonstration they have imposed that a Residency law be included among the demands, which has never been part of the demands of the large ecologist and environmental organizations on the island. Tribalizing and trivializing an independentist and millennialist environmentalism: we just lacked that.
