The traditional Christmas feast of the Las Palmas employers' association, more than a business event, seems to have become a meeting of friends and acquaintances where even uninvited executives queued to get in. This year, the sight of around twenty uninvited diners waiting at the door of the hall has revealed the transformation of an exclusive meeting into a flea market. The CCE of Las Palmas is no longer like the one presided over by Suárez Megías, Alberto Isasi, Alberto Cabré or Mario Rodríguez, to name a few historical figures.
In his speech, Pedro Ortega, the boss of the employers' association, rather than talking about the real problems of companies and workers, dedicated himself to reciting quotes from classical authors such as Plato and showing off his erudition. According to him, with a little "unity and hope", the islands will become an investment paradise. A vision as utopian as that of the Falangist Muñoz Grandes when he affirmed that "the happiness of the people is the supreme law".
The reality is quite different. The Canarian employers' association, once a bastion of urban business, has become a social club where partisan loyalty takes precedence over the defence of rural business interests. The big businessmen, those who generate real employment and wealth, are conspicuous by their absence. In their place, we find a host of business officials, politicians and consultants who live off the story. Ortega said that the REF of the Canary Islands "turns 50 years old" in 2024, which is complete nonsense if we follow the theory of the director of the REF Chair of the ULPGC and historian, Salvador Miranda, who has spent decades analyzing the decrees of the Catholic Monarchs to justify the current REF.
In his speech, Ortega also worried about the "coexistence" between tourists and residents in the south of Gran Canaria, although he did not mention the municipalities of San Bartolomé de Tirajana or Mogán, lest that imply admitting that the economic capital of the Canary Islands is located in this region. A concern, that of the apartment owners of Las Palmas, who break the unity of the market in the south of the island, which sounds like a joke when we know that many of these tourist entrepreneurs in Las Palmas are the same ones who are buying houses in tourist areas in the south of the island to put them up for rent, thus generating the mantra of the famous real estate bubble that is expelling residents, generating tourismophobia.
In short, the luncheon of the Canarian employers' association has made it clear that the business organisation is more concerned with maintaining its privileges than with defending the interests of companies and workers. And meanwhile, the Canarian economy continues to falter, hotels in the south of Gran Canaria have been waiting to be built since 1996, galloping inflation and youth unemployment continue to be an endemic problem. As Muñoz Grandes would say: "Politics is the art of deceiving the people."
