Established independently? They don't demand a unified market from holiday rental owners in Playa del Inglés, even with sanctions, yet each mayor organizes their own little charade when it comes to tourism promotion? The issue is simple, but it reeks of mediocrity, with the Las Palmas media hyping it up to see if they can get a piece of the pie. That Tejeda, the pure and simple middle ground of Tirajana, that town that feels like a slap in the face from rock and air, lends itself to the Ferrero Rocher Christmas pantomime isn't tourism promotion. It's third-world vulgarity disguised as a fairy tale.
The competition is a bad joke. Five villages vying for a handful of LED lights and the dubious honor of being the "golden heart of Christmas." And if they don't win? What's left? The feeling that Tejeda almost sold its soul for easy money and the empty applause of people who don't know that the true magic of the summit doesn't need the pull of some advertising actor to ignite it.
It's mental colonization. It's when a beautiful town decides that being beautiful isn't enough. It has to be vulgarly gilded to get the world's attention. And the silence of our politicians in the face of this sell-out of our food and landscape dignity only proves one thing: they're too busy counting container traffic at the port to hear how the soul of a town in the midlands is dying. It's the price of Third World modernity.
Where has decency gone? Gran Canaria has spent decades proclaiming its commitment to food sovereignty, to local produce, to defending the almond tree against the desert. And what do we surrender to? Italian chocolates, greasy excess, and the golden sequin that tells us our Christmas is lesser if it doesn't smell of imported hazelnuts wrapped in rich people's paper.
It's a picture of moral disaster. While the Island Council and farmers are working themselves to the bone for the local cheese and sweets during this period, Tejeda dons a waitress's cap to do a favor for a multinational corporation that promotes, yes, Christmas excess, that cloying indulgence that fattens the souls and pockets of others. Is this our identity, selling out the summit for a 30-second commercial?
The vulgarity doesn't end in the stomach. It continues in the retina. The landscape of Tejeda, the Tirajana Caldera, is a living spectacle, already cheerful with its December sun. And what does the company do? It comes to add the snow and the continental dandruff glitter that doesn't exist here and isn't needed. Transforming the place into a "fairytale village" is turning the real, the harsh, and the authentic into a cardboard set for television. They call it folklore with promotion; it's the prostitution of the landscape. The village isn't the protagonist; it's the prop, the perfect rural backdrop for product placement that will remind us that we are only happy if we consume what they sell us, not what we produce.
