In his professional career, he has been rapporteur of the Parliamentary Commission for the study of migrations in the Parliament of the Canary Islands and advisor to the Vice Presidency of the Canary Islands Government on migration matters, among other positions.
The Island Government Council of the Cabildo of Gran Canaria has today given its approval to the appointment of the Gran Canaria journalist José María (Txema) Santana Suárez as the new insular director of Communication of the Ministry of the Presidency and Sustainable Mobility, coordinated by Teodoro Sosa, considering him the ideal person for the position, based on their training, experience and professional competence.
The new insular director has been proposed to occupy this management position by the president of the insular Corporation, Antonio Morales, with favorable reports from the Human Resources Management Service and the General Intervention of the insular Institution.
From now on, Santana will assume the functions of the island directors included in art. 48 of the Organic Regulations of the Government and Administration of the Cabildo of Gran Canaria, related to its scope of powers in the President's Office, with the specific tasks of planning and defining the communicative actions that are transferred to the citizens about the institutional activity of the Corporation insular; coordinate the actions of the press professionals assigned to said Cabinet and respond to the demands made by the media in order to know the activity of the Institution.
Txema Santana has a degree in Journalism from the University of the Basque Country and has extensive specific training in the areas of tourism, travel, migration, borders, refugees, unaccompanied minors and climate change.
Throughout his long professional career, he has worked as a freelance journalist for different local, regional, state and international media, as well as a trainer of professionals for the creation of new migration narratives. Likewise, he has held the position of rapporteur of the Parliamentary Commission for the study of migrations in the Parliament of the Canary Islands, in 2021 and 2022; advisor and spokesperson for the Vice Presidency of the Government of the Canary Islands on immigration matters for the 2020-2023 crisis, as well as a technician in the Advocacy and Communication Area of the Spanish Commission for Refugee Assistance (CEAR).
Likewise, he has been a correspondent for the newspaper 'El País' in the Canary Islands and editor of the Informative Services of Cadena Ser, of the newspaper 'Canarias Ahora', of 'El Telégrafo' of Ecuador, of 'La Prensa Gráfica' of El Salvador, in addition to being founder and CEO of 'GuinGuinBali', an information space about Africa, between 2010 and 2015.
In the exercise of his profession, Santana has published dozens of reports and has written reports on migrations, both in South America, Central America and on African routes, with special dedication over the last 13 years to the Canary Islands route.
