The indifference in southern Gran Canaria isn't just apathy; it's a form of passive resistance. The money generated by tourism is squandered on a million euros for land for a church in La Isleta, for example. They've told Brussels there will be many tourists—but from where? Las Palmas, seeking to exacerbate its housing problems, wants to displace the few remaining islanders from its prime areas to create what's called the European Capital of Culture, which is essentially a real estate experiment.
For now, they're finalists with dense concepts like the 'Rebellion of Geography' and "cultural democracy from the margins." However, sixty kilometers to the south, the news is still being received with the same enthusiasm a Norwegian tourist might show at a lecture on quantum physics in the blazing sun: with an indifference as solid and stony as Roque Nublo. Is there already a profile of the contracting authority?
The paradox is almost poetic. While the mayor of Las Palmas, Carolina Darias, speaks in vague terms like "making the impossible possible" and "changing the conversations in Europe," on the sunbeds of Playa del Inglés, the only possible conversation revolves around the price of beer and sun protection factor. There's a psychological gap that no tunnel on the GC-1 has managed to bridge: for the south of Gran Canaria, the capital is a distant administrative entity that exists only to collect taxes and, occasionally, propose intellectual utopias that wouldn't fit in an all-inclusive brochure.
The campaign slogan, 'Rebellion of Geography,' aimed to challenge the hierarchies between center and periphery. The problem is that Maspalomas already has its own geographical rebellion: that of being the economic hub of the archipelago but culturally treated as the backyard of a self-absorbed metropolis. For the waiter in San Agustín or the receptionist in Meloneras, Las Palmas competing against Cáceres or Granada for a European title has about as much practical relevance as the discovery of a new lichen species in Antarctica. Culture in the south is alien to "reflection on contemporary narratives," a luxury only those who don't have to balance the books on overnight stays for the season can afford.
It's fascinating to observe how the capital's cultural ecosystem goes to great lengths to convince a Brussels jury of its "Atlantic uniqueness" while being unable to convince its own neighbors in San Bartolomé de Tirajana that the project belongs to them. The Las Palmas de Gran Canaria '31 bid is presented as a "collectively constructed whole," but that "whole" seems to end abruptly at the Arguineguín ravine. It's the triumph of island localism taken to the extreme: a city that wants to be the cultural epicenter of Europe but fails to be the cultural epicenter of its own island.
The mayor of Las Palmas, Darias, appeals to resilience and overcoming the failure of 2010. This belief in victory is commendable, but it overlooks the fact that the "social and creative fabric" that celebrates its events at the Castillo de Mata is a self-sustaining, closed circle. In the south, the "Geography Rebellion" is perceived as yet another maneuver designed to attract European funds that will ultimately pave a street in Vegueta or renovate a theater in Triana, without a single drop of this cultural windfall being diverted to the neglected infrastructure of the south.
Now, those in charge of the bid must draft a new, 100-page Bid Book. It will be a brilliant document, full of words like inclusion, dialogue, and border, but probably none of those pages will explain why most of the island's working population is unaware that such a technical office even exists. The European jury will visit the island and be shown the invisible geographies of the capital's neighborhoods, carefully avoiding any inquiries about the project in the south, lest they discover that the only "rebellion" of interest there is the one against rental prices caused by the overtourism that the culture itself often masks.
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria dreams of 2031, but it does so with the solitude of a long-distance runner who believes the entire stadium is cheering him on when, in reality, the crowd in the south has gone to the beach to ignore the race. If being the capital is an opportunity to "imagine new ways of life," the first step should be to imagine a way of life in which the north and south share more than just the island's name and mutual disdain. Until then, the capital will be European, Atlantic, and insular, but it will remain painfully lonely in its enthusiasm.
