Starting at the end: The blame lies with Coalición Canaria (CC) for leveraging the influence of the Health Ministry through absurd reports about nonexistent risks surrounding Totisa’s gasification project, giving in to the lobbies that did not want the opening of the energy-supply business at the Port of Las Palmas. Public Health never has anything to say about the chimneys and polluting emissions from cruise ships at the Santa Catalina Wharf. It is also true that the number of psychiatrists in the Canary Islands is seven per 100,000 inhabitants, the lowest figure in the EU, according to official sources. Transparency note / Disclosure: The author holds no open positions, financial interests or advisory ties with any of the companies, parties or public administrations cited in this report.
The Visigoths are in the Canary Islands
In Las Palmas, Totisa’s entry and multimillion-euro investment have been torpedoed to prevent an operator from Madrid or Rome from entering the market through the financial barrier posed by the electrical connection, while in Tenerife investments in shipyards are being blocked so that a Greek businessman—who longs for his own Canarian nationalist parliamentary group in Madrid—does not suffer losses in his market share for ship repairs. It is institutional self-sabotage packed with middlemen that condemns the Canary Islands’ ports to being mere spectators while the mainland takes the future of the maritime business.
And to think they volunteered against the French…
Teófila Martínez, the leader of the People’s Party in Cádiz and president of that city’s port—which in April 1811 was saved from falling into French hands thanks to 900 volunteers from Gran Canaria belonging to the Canary Islands Grenadier Battalion of Las Palmas—presented an agreement on Wednesday, on the sidelines of Seatrade Cruise Med 2026, to promote, through Endesa, the development of her area’s maritime sector as an energy hub, clearly to the detriment of the Canary Islands’ ports, which, in their woke agenda, have chosen to commit suicide rather than provide this service. More reasons not to operate out of Las Palmas or Santa Cruz de Tenerife as home ports.
Through this collaboration protocol, a plan of action will be defined and designed to transform the Bay of Cádiz Port into a greener, decarbonized facility. To that end, an energy-efficient model will be implemented that integrates sustainable mobility, renewable energy, energy storage and the digitization of processes through open data and distributed platforms, placing Cádiz at the forefront of this type of environment nationally and internationally.
The audacity of the Andalusian People’s Party
For Teófila Martínez, both the protocol and the electrification project are examples of the Bay of Cádiz Port Authority’s commitment to sustainability, which she described as follows: ‘It is not an option, but an obligation. We are not free to choose whether or not to be sustainable. We are obliged to be so and, specifically in the case of the Port of Cádiz, we are committed to going green.’ In this regard, President Martínez emphasized the need to take a proactive role, recalling measures such as the anti-pollution screens at Cabezuela, emissions-control systems, three photovoltaic plants and an LNG eco-parking facility.
A showcase of local strength and powerlessness
The project presented at the Andalusian facility’s booth represents a forceful demonstration of investment capacity. With a total investment of €8.25 million—of which the Port Authority of Cádiz is contributing €1.5 million and Endesa €6.75 million, backed by €2.7 million from NextGenerationEU funds—the Alfonso XIII Wharf in Cádiz is becoming a benchmark for electrification. The OPS (Onshore Power Supply) station has 16 MVA of capacity in its first phase through a mobile articulated arm, with plans to expand to 24 MVA, enabling annual savings of 5,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and reducing nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 96% during port calls.
To complete the rollout, Cádiz is presenting its own technology as an ‘exportable model’ that could eventually be applied to the Canary Islands’ ports. It is a Visigoth scene in which the Port of Las Palmas played the role of mere host and showcase for someone else’s success, demonstrating that heeding Public Health officials creates these destructive distortions in the market.
The combination of Endesa’s investment drive and the Andalusian People’s Party’s political audacity has exposed the weaknesses of an island administration tied hand and foot, where the discourse of the green transition evaporates amid Public Health paperwork while the mainland takes the real business. This loss of centrality is not merely a reputational setback, but a direct threat to the operational survival of the Canary Islands’ ports on the Atlantic map.
By giving away the initiative in the supply of electricity and clean fuels to facilities such as Cádiz, Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife, they are putting their most valuable asset at risk: their status as key ports for major international shipping companies. If the archipelago insists on perpetuating its administrative labyrinths and turning its back on real energy infrastructure, the cruise industry will have no hesitation in rerouting toward mainland ports that do guarantee effective environmental standards, leaving the island docks relegated to mere secondary stopovers.
The article ‘Cádiz capitalizes on the Canary Islands’ “everyday nothingness”: it takes the cruise ship energy business’ was first published on canarymaritime.com.
