Canarian nationalism is experiencing an identity crisis that transcends party labels and has taken root in the realm of institutional competence. The handling of the hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship has unleashed a political storm in the archipelago, where traditional sectors of the pro-independence movement are watching the current leadership of the Canary Islands government with astonishment. The criticism is not limited to the logistics of the healthcare response, but extends to a degradation of political practice that seems to have replaced state diplomacy with instant messaging.
From the Canarian Nationalist Party (PNC), José María Hernández points out that "Madrid has done what it had to do because that's what it's been allowed to do in this and thousands of other matters, such as Aena (the airport authority) or the control of territorial waters. It had a golden opportunity on a silver platter and it squandered it." The PNC leader has given voice to a discontent that runs through the islands' power circles. The diagnosis is devastating: the absence of a strategic roadmap has left the Canary Islands at the mercy of improvised management. The feeling that the Canary Islands are acting as a secondary player in their own territory fuels the argument that the generational shift in the governing parties has prioritized loyalty and digital marketing over the state-building necessary to manage high-level crises.
Hernández laments that the current leadership behaves as if it were heading a neighborhood association, lacking specialized personnel capable of engaging firmly with Madrid and Brussels. The question echoing in the offices of Santa Cruz and Las Palmas is pointed: "What is the President of the Canary Islands Government doing on a gossip program on a Madrid TV channel saying that he has been sending WhatsApp messages to a Minister of Health to manage an international epidemiological alert and that she hasn't responded, when he only has two interlocutors: the President of the Spanish Government or the President of the European Commission?"
The leader of the PNC emphasizes that while nationalism is fracturing due to the low technical level of its leaders, Brussels has taken control of the narrative. The European Commission, with Fernando Clavijo in Brussels, activated the Health Security Committee, coordinating with the WHO and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to assess the impact of the virus, without inviting the head of the Canary Islands government, even though he was present. Although spokesperson Eva Hrncirova describes the risk to the general population as "low," the deployment of air ambulances from Cape Verde to evacuate Dutch citizens in serious condition "demonstrates that the scale of the problem exceeds the capabilities of Canary Islands domestic politics because there are no prepared political figures," Hernández points out.
The MV Hondius is scheduled to dock in the port of Granadilla de Abona this Saturday, making Tenerife the epicenter of a complex repatriation operation. For the PNC (Canarian Nationalist Party), the fact that the regional government depends on the activation of the EU's civil protection mechanism to obtain assistance underscores the loss of autonomy, "and that won't be resolved with a parliamentary group in Madrid of six or seven members brought together by digital marketing," Hernández concluded.
