The president of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, Antonio Morales, accompanied by the island’s Councilor of Finance, Pedro Justo Brito, and the technical coordinator for Economic Development, Energy Sovereignty, Climate and Knowledge, Raúl García Brink, visited the land-based headquarters of the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands, where he met with the director, José Joaquín Hernández Brito.
During his visit, the President expressed the interest of the Island Institution in participating in the Consortium’s management bodies, and announced that the Cabildo will continue to collaborate and provide funding to Plocan, “which is one of the most important blue economy development poles in the Canary Islands, due to the extraordinary work it carries out and the future projection it represents for the Canary Islands in research and innovation, in order to generate alternatives to the economic model that sustains our economy”.
He also informed about the investment of 14 million euros that is being made in the modernization and adaptation of the infrastructures to favour the work that has been carried out for many years in the port of Taliarte, an area managed by the Cabildo and where, as Morales specified, the most important research areas dedicated to the blue economy of the Archipelago are located, such as Ecoagua, the Spanish Bank of Algae, the Oceanographic Institute of Global Change and PLOCAN.
José Joaquín Hernández Brito predicted that the blue economy is going to double in this decade and Gran Canaria, and the Canary Islands in general, have the capacity to attract European funds, projects and investment, and to create employment in all issues related to the generation of renewable energies in the marine environment, with aquaculture, with the digital transformation in the field of tourism and in everything related to the port area.
“We have a great opportunity,” he assured, “and I am very honoured that the Cabildo is making investments in PLOCAN, to strengthen this role and, in the coming years, we are going to multiply the activity we are doing and, above all, advance in the process of using the marine environment to create economic activity and employment and to diversify tourism in the Canary Islands and, in particular, in Gran Canaria.”
