For two months, the current leader of the Gran Canaria municipal party, Teodoro Sosa, has been holding private meetings—mainly lunches and coffee after dinner—with wealthy individuals on the island of Gran Canaria, and they have all explained to Sosa that leaving Nueva Canarias to make the same mistakes is absurd. "This has changed: it's not like going to a dairy company cafeteria to pick up a brown envelope," an economic leader told Maspalomas24H after this newspaper revealed Onalia Bueno's departure from Coalición Canaria last Friday.
"The guarantee of business support depends on Onalia Bueno's presence, because with the rural heart and the cheapskates from Arinaga, who never fill up their cars to come to the capital, we're not going anywhere," said a member of the Gran Canaria Business Circle from Las Palmas, who asked not to be quoted in this article.
In the silent reconfiguration of the political landscape in Gran Canaria, money is starting to talk. It's doing so in favor of Onalia Bueno, in an increasingly close orbit around Teodoro Sosa, the strongman of Gran Canaria's municipalism. This is a calculated move: to avoid a repeat of the old, left-leaning, worn-out pattern lacking the capacity for real dialogue outside the island's perimeter.
The strategy is not to replicate the clientelist and vertical structure of the former ATI, now absorbed by Coalición Canaria. The goal is more ambitious: to place Gran Canaria's interests on the national political agenda without falling back on the vices of the past. This requires more than just trusted positions and local networks: it requires a project, a narrative, and, above all, credibility in Las Palmas.
The example of what they are trying to avoid is clear. On the one hand, José Carlos Mauricio's ICAN (National Council of People's Commissars), which diluted its political potential with personalities devoid of ideology. On the other, Pablo Rodríguez's CC (Cultural Council), which has demonstrated how a force without a solid structure can degenerate into weak leadership, amassed among minor positions and tactical decisions without strategic vision. "A CC without ideology in Gran Canaria has proven to be a failure, and, while we're at it, any shopping center manager can manage better than what exists now," said the same businessman consulted.
In this new era, the moderate center-right of Gran Canaria appears key. The idea is not so much to compete with the municipalist left as to overcome this dichotomy, building its own space that achieves cross-party support, management capacity, and, above all, real influence on the major decisions made in Madrid.
What's at stake isn't just political hegemony on the island, but the credibility of nationalism in Gran Canaria, damaged by years of improvisation, local noise, and a lack of island ambition. "We see it as quite right that Onalia Bueno is the right piece to fit into a broader framework, as long as she knows how to balance, silence, and support. CC could start by making a move by sending Pablo Rodríguez to the Senate," said the same business source.
