There are municipalities where budgets are implemented and others where they are buried. San Bartolomé de Tirajana, the tourist epicenter of southern Gran Canaria, prefers the latter. A place where money flows like cheap rum in a bar in Playa del Inglés, but whose city council seems designed not to manage, but to watch everything fall apart while councilors take photos with Nordic tourists dressed as drag queens.
They budgeted €98,5 million for 2024. How much did they spend? Barely 40%. More than €60 million remains unspent, as the governing party (PP-CC) itself acknowledged after the opposition's complaint. A fiscal paradox in the municipality with the most tourist beds in the entire Canary Islands, more vacation homes than Palma de Mallorca and Formentera combined—3.280 in total, according to official data from the Island Council—and more tourists per square meter than palm trees in the Fataga ravine.
The government of paralysis
The team led by Marco Aurelio Pérez, a political boss turned technocrat out of necessity and survival, manages like someone saving good wine for a wedding. €180.000 to hire the College of Psychologists and diagnose the extreme poverty that their own municipal technicians had already detected. Duplicity, waste, or shamelessness: the reader can choose.
Meanwhile, only 1.000 euros for sports subsidies in a municipality where international triathlons, youth soccer tournaments, and windsurfing championships were held every year. 100 euros to replace street furniture in parks. One chair, maybe two if purchased secondhand. But not a single shade for the residents. Welfare is outsourced, and management piles up like cigarette butts on the El Veril promenade.
The paradise that expels its own children
Housing has become the stuff of science fiction. The average rent in Maspalomas exceeds 950 euros, while the average salary for a waiter doesn't exceed 1.200. The result: young people moving to Telde, couples sleeping in their cars, and tourism workers crammed into storage rooms. All while vacation homes for 150 euros a night are flourishing on Avenida de Italia.
In Palma de Mallorca, there are 1.006 tourist homes, while Formentera has 717 tourist homes. Combined, the total is 1.723 tourist homes, significantly fewer than the 3.280 in San Bartolomé de Tirajana.
And the municipality has ceded its territory to tourism capital without any social compensation. There isn't a single industrial park here, nor a public housing plan underway, nor a strategy to prevent the expulsion of the local population. The sun-and-sunbed economy is profitable... but only for those with property or friends among the urban planning officials.
Where is the money, Marcus Aurelius?
A budget inflated to 98,5 million euros—thanks to state, European, and tourism IGIC transfers—and no significant cultural project or youth employment policy. Instead, a string of official events, receptions, tributes, folklore festivals, and photos with traditional costumes. San Bartolomé lives an institutional fiction redolent of a Canarian vaudeville.
And when someone raises their voice, the propaganda machine responds: "We're working tirelessly," "the files are being processed," "the General Plan is under review," "the investments will arrive." Textbook excuses. Marco Aurelio Pérez's policy is the policy of the air-conditioned siesta.
The south that is dying among palm trees
San Bartolomé de Tirajana isn't governed: it's occupied. Occupied by a political elite that has learned not to act, not to decide, not to take risks. To sustain itself over time without managing the present. A municipality with more revenue than many town councils, and less execution than a mediocre city council.
The consequence? A stifled neighborhood fabric, a slumped middle class, a youth migrating, and a tourism sector that sustains itself, without the need for a city council that collects like a state and spends like a ruined municipality.
Tourists are toasting under the Maspalomas sun. But the credibility of a political system that is stagnant, unproductive, and allergic to change is also being burned. And one day, southern Gran Canaria will wake up from the mirage. Although it may already be too late.
