In Gran Canaria, the bus has become a farce, a Canarian tragicomedy with a banana-grove aroma and a diesel engine. It turns out that the drivers of Global, the company that monopolizes intercity transport on the island, have taken out their banners, blocked the passage of passengers, and sung the strike song. Nothing unusual there: we've had transport strikes since the camel gave way to the engine.
But the matter borders on the ludicrous because the same people who stop buses or hail guaguas on the islands, the angry drivers, are also the owners of the company they're blocking. Yes, you read that right: the striker is protesting against himself. The driver who crosses his arms at the San Telmo terminal becomes both a boss and a proletarian, a union member with a payroll and board membership.
The council, with the tone of an exhausted father, reminds them that their rights are already recognized in Gran Canaria: that here they earn better than in Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, that the agreements are signed, that there is no whip or slavery. But it doesn't matter. The strike has something contagious and carnival-like about it: if they stop in Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, they won't be any different in Gran Canaria, even if the protest comes back at them like a yellow-buggy boomerang.
The Single Transport Authority, seeing the yard turned into a picket line, threatens to review minimum services so that the strike doesn't turn into abuse. Meanwhile, the citizens, who just want to get from Gáldar to Maspalomas without the driver getting metaphysical, are left stranded at bus stops. British tourists, with their increasingly weak pound, don't understand a thing: they thought the sun was guaranteed in the Canary Islands, but not that the bus ride was a matter of Hegelian philosophy. And residents look on incredulously, with that island sarcasm, knowing that in Gran Canaria even strikes are a joke: workers at war with their own company, employers declaring themselves proletarian, and a council praying for at least one bus to run on time.
