New island councils law approved in Canary Islands Parliament

New island councils law approved despite water amendment dispute

The new law on island councils (cabildos) approved this Wednesday in the Canary Islands Parliament will not modify current legislation to halt or delay the expropriation of private water wells and galleries scheduled for 2040. Canarian Coalition (CC) and the Socialist Party (PSOE) withdrew a last-minute oral amendment they had previously submitted during the committee stage, after New Canaries (NC-Bc) blocked the proposal from being debated, as such amendments require unanimous acceptance. The initiative, which had been promoted and negotiated with parliamentary groups by the Tenerife Island Council, was therefore not included in the final legislation.

NC-Bc rejects ‘back door’ amendment but opens door to future debate

Speaking in the corridors of Parliament after the vote, Luis Campos, leader and spokesperson for the Canarian nationalists, argued that his party’s opposition to the amendment proposed by the nationalists and socialists was not due to disagreement with its substance, but rather the manner in which it was introduced. “This is a serious problem on a vital issue for the Canary Islands, and it cannot be included through the back door in a law that is not the 1990 Water Law,” he said. In this way, NC-Bc has left the door open for a specific legislative text extending private exploitation rights until 2040 to be debated “before the end of the current legislature,” even though there are still 14 years until the compulsory expropriation deadline.

Socialist MP Manuel Fumero warned that “many owners of wells and galleries, faced with uncertainty, are stopping cleaning the aquifers, which causes them to dry up,” worsening the water emergency situation in the face of unstoppable climate change. “Let us not forget that there are 9,000 owners of wells and galleries that provide drinking water to 70% of the Canary Islands population,” he added.

Nationalist MP Socorro Beato insisted that the oral amendment vetoed by NC was “the most appropriate parliamentary technique,” noting that the island councils law itself modifies Article 15 of the Water Law in its fifth final provision, establishing that “the president of the island council shall be the person holding the Presidency or the person responsible for the area or department of the council to which the body is attached.” According to Beato’s argument, “nothing was being modified through the back door, since the island councils law modifies the 1990 legislation with the favourable vote of NC, and the oral amendment was the most appropriate mechanism.”

Broad consensus except for Vox opposition

Aside from this disagreement, the rest of the debate garnered broad consensus, from which, as is traditional, the three Vox deputies abstained. Paula Jover argued that the new law “reinforces island power, which empties the Autonomous Community. We want to recentralise powers and not see them transferred further every day; we do not need more positions, but less administration.” This argument led Socialist MP Nayra Alemán to express satisfaction that Vox “has not touched the ball in the island councils, and I hope they never will, because they neither know nor understand them.”

Full authority for island councils and new extraterritoriality powers

The new text endorsed by Parliament eliminates “the provisions relating to the suspension, modification and revocation of transfers” of powers delegated to and assumed by the island corporations. It establishes that “transfers of powers entail full ownership, and not merely their management” – meaning there will no longer be ‘borrowed’ or ‘supervised’ powers that can be taken away from the councils by the Autonomous Community. As enshrined in Article 70.2 of the current Statute of Autonomy, island councils, “as institutions of the Autonomous Community, shall exercise executive functions of an insular nature” across a total of 22 competences. Under the new law, all of these will be protected through a system “based on mutual and bidirectional institutional loyalty.”

This is not the only reform. Following a proposal from the Independent Herrenian Group (AHI), the concept of extraterritoriality has been included, defined by MP Raúl Acosta as “establishing insular interest outside the island, to be able to build residences for students or for those who have to travel to hospital, because the reality of citizens does not end at the ports and airports.”

Clearer legal framework and calls for further decentralisation

The most legalistic intervention came from Popular Party (PP) MP Luz Reverón, who highlighted that the new law offers “clear answers” to prevent the dual nature of island councils – as both local institutions and entities of the Autonomous Community – from becoming a “permanent source of doubts about how certain functions should be exercised or which legal regime should apply.” “We cannot talk about grey areas; there cannot be different interpretations depending on the councils or depending on the national official assigned to them,” she said.

Casimiro Curbelo, spokesperson for the Gomera Socialist Group (ASG) and president of the La Gomera Island Council, emphasised that island corporations are administrations that are “unique, efficient and loved by citizens.” He called for “even greater” decentralisation of powers to counter the political and economic predominance of Tenerife and Gran Canaria, demanding “more powers” for the non-capital islands as well as a specific tax system that addresses their particularities.

‘We are building a nation today’

“Today we are building a nation,” summarised Campos. “It seems that agreement has become an exception, but today this Chamber demonstrates that it is still possible to find common ground when the general interest prevails over partisan differences,” concluded nationalist MP Beato.

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