Article published by Mr. José Carlos Francisco in La Gaveta Económica in the July 2017 issue. When these lines see the light of the press, the “Papeles de Economía Canaria No. 3” published by Corporación 5 with the sponsorship of the DISA Foundation will have been publicly presented. This number tries to demonstrate that the Canarian Economy as a whole diverges in terms of economic well-being from the Spanish average, in a continuous and enormously worrying manner. Not in vain, we have gone from a per capita income of 97% in 2000, to only 82% last year. It undoubtedly reflects the collective failure that needs to be righted as soon as possible.
What we do in number three of “papers” is to state an incontestable fact and in the most graphic and simple way possible. We are not going to unravel the reasons that have motivated this situation, much less advise or design policies to reverse this state of affairs. And we have decided this way, because it seems to us that before acting, we must be aware of the pure and simple reality. A reality that many deny, excuse or ignore.
Among those who know it well and have analyzed it, is Professor David Padrón Marrero, who in the manual “Economy of the Canary Islands: dynamics, structure and challenges”, begins the analysis” of the convergence of the Canary Islands with Spain from 1960 to 2010 and among many other things, concludes with two, which deserve to be highlighted here. The first is that the performance of the Canary Islands Economy was excellent between 1960 and 1985, far surpassing the Spanish average and everything. This is supported by productivity. Since then, the Canary Islands' performance in terms of GDP per capita is below the Spanish average, and it is no longer productivity that drives growth, but rather the number of people employed. The second conclusion is that "we must investigate the fundamental factors of economic growth, among which the institutional framework occupies a prominent place."
Indeed, there are two leads that I think researchers should follow. One is that the successful dynamic ends approximately with entry into the European Union. This would mean that the subsequent institutional framework favored the peninsular economy more than the Canary Islands. The other clue is that the legislation of the Territorial Planning and Tourism Guidelines, at the beginning of this century, did not create incentives to promote private initiative, creativity and entrepreneurship, but rather the opposite, a kind of moratorium on new investments and jobs.
