The fishing sector in southern Gran Canaria unanimously raised its voice on Tuesday against what it considers the most worrying decision in recent years, a move driven by the General Secretariat of Fisheries in Madrid that directly jeopardizes the future of artisanal fishing in the Canary Islands. The Regional Federation of Fishermen's Guilds of the Canary Islands, along with the provincial federations of Tenerife and Las Palmas (which represents key guilds in southern Gran Canaria), issued a "resounding and unanimous rejection" of the proposal approved at the ICCAT (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas) meetings held last November in Seville.
The document, presented by the European Union delegation under the mandate of the Spanish government, authorizes an experimental plan for industrial purse seine fishing and the installation of fattening cages for yellowfin and bluefin tuna in Canary Island waters. This initiative has always met, and continues to meet, with the absolute disapproval of Canary Island fishermen. For the artisanal fleet, particularly sensitive to pressure on the migratory resources that underpin their traditional economy, the arrival of industrial purse seine vessels and the large fattening cages represents unfair competition and a direct ecological threat to an outermost region already classified as sensitive and fragile.
The sector's outrage centers on the way the project has been handled. Fishermen denounce the fact that neither the sector nor the Canary Islands Government's fisheries department was consulted or informed that the initiative would be presented by the Spanish Government in the EU negotiations before ICCAT. It is unacceptable that a proposal of this magnitude and impact, which crucially and directly compromises the future of traditional fishing in the Canary Islands, has been proposed in this unilateral manner. This procedure clearly contravenes the basic principles of consultation and participation established in current legislation. Specifically, it cites a violation of Article 7 of Law 5/2023 on sustainable fishing, which requires that additional requirements for access to resources—such as those contemplated in this pilot plan—must be established "after consultation with the autonomous communities and the affected fishing sector."
The complete absence of this consultation not only violates a basic legal obligation of cooperation and participation, but also seriously disregards the powers that the Statute of Autonomy of the Canary Islands itself grants to the Autonomous Community in the management of fishing activity. The sector demands that the regional government take immediate measures to halt this threat hanging over the sustainability of the artisanal fleet in the south and the rest of the archipelago.
