Nuria Cabrera urges tactical voting as Teodoro Sosa calls for bilateral agreements and fair funding

The candidates appeared at AM CC’s island headquarters on Tuesday afternoon, following a meeting between Teodoro Sosa and the current lead candidates on AM-CC’s island and municipal lists. The meeting was called to hear their concerns and gather Fuerteventura’s main demands, which he will take to the Spanish Congress of Deputies.

Nuria Cabrera, AM-CC’s candidate for the Senate representing Fuerteventura, has urged voters to cast a tactical vote so the island has a voice in Madrid. She links that representation to the ability to call for investment and “champion Fuerteventura’s interests to improve the quality of life of the people who live here”.

State funding and delays in its payment are central to her demands. Cabrera questions why Fuerteventura Island Council and the Canary Islands Government have to advance their own funds to meet commitments that fall to the State.

She cites free public transport as an example. The island authority, she explains, has to advance €10 million to meet its obligations to the operator, while the State’s contribution arrives at the end of the year. She is calling for the money to be paid at the start of the financial year, freeing up funds to improve bus facilities and stations.

“As a finance councillor, I know how much the Island Council suffers from having to use its own funds to pay for free transport,” she said.

On whether she would continue in her island role, she said that if elected to the Senate she would remain a finance councillor on the Island Council “at least until the end of the term; after that, it will be the party’s decision”.

Cabrera says the two roles are compatible and that her experience gives her an understanding of the island’s needs in water, roads and educational infrastructure, which she will have to champion. “There is a lot for us to demand in Madrid, and we will do it — of course we will.”

Funding is a matter of rights and justice

Teodoro Sosa, Coalición Canaria-Primero Canarias’ candidate for the Congress of Deputies in Las Palmas province, again highlighted the unity of Canarian nationalism and called for bilateral agreements and fair regional funding. This was not about political sensitivities, he stressed, but “rights and justice, what belongs to us”.

After meeting farmers, livestock breeders and fishermen on the island this afternoon, he voiced concern about the conditions for competing with products from other territories. On housing, he called for funding to prevent young people from having to leave the places where they were born and grew up.

Sosa also raised water needs and questioned why funding was being provided for a desalination plant in Morocco while, he alleges, resources are lacking for infrastructure in the Canary Islands. “If €140 million is being requested, we cannot be told that the funding is going towards a desalination plant in Morocco, as a loan. And yet there is no funding for the Canary Islands’ water resources.”

He also pointed to problems with energy generation and distribution and called for military sites to be returned for public facilities or housing.

“Those who know me know I’m forceful, that I’ll say what needs to be said and that I won’t keep quiet,” he said.

Rodríguez highlights housing, coastal affairs and security

Juan José Rodríguez, number three on the Congress list and finance councillor at La Oliva Town Council, identified housing, coastal affairs and security as among the island’s main demands.

He said he would continue the work of MP Cristina Valido and argued for a representative in Madrid with the freedom to act independently: “We can be sure that with Teo, someone will genuinely be able to speak freely in Congress without having to answer to anyone in Madrid.”