It is supposed that the Chambers of Commerce are named ‘of Navigation’ but it must be navigation by Internet. The fact is that there are chamber elections in the Canary Islands on July 10. In Tenerife, the president of the Chamber represents the Union of Industrial and Agricultural Merchants of Tenerife, S.A. In Las Palmas, it is an employee of the Chamber itself. The design of the new governing bodies of the chambers will maintain the division of seats established by Canary Islands legislation, combining the direct voting of registered companies with the seats reserved for voluntary contributions and for individuals of recognized economic prestige, which creates a certain margin for port entrepreneurs to aspire to these centers of power. But port capital does not spend a dime on lobbying.
In the 2026 call, the Plenary of the Chamber of Gran Canaria will elect 10 representatives of recognized prestige and another 10 by economic contribution, while the corporation of Santa Cruz de Tenerife will assign 7 seats to each of these groups, whereas Fuerteventura and Lanzarote will limit this representation to 4 members per category. To qualify for the financial contribution seats, the aspiring companies must prove a minimum and continuous outlay of 3,000 euros annually.
The map of corporate and employer representation in the Canary Islands initiates its legal reconfiguration process. The Ministry of Economy, Industry, Commerce, and Self-employed has published the order for the renewal of the Plenary of the four public law corporations of the archipelago: the Official Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Services, and Navigation of Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, and La Graciosa, and Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The in-person voting has been scheduled for Friday, July 10, 2026, opening a transition period in business governance that will last for the next four years.
The activation of the electoral calendar responds to the mandate of the state Basic Law and the Autonomous Law of Chambers of the Canary Islands. The administrative process, coordinated following the general opening decreed by the Ministry of Economy, Commerce, and Business, will be executed under the supervision of the regional minister of the area due to the absence of a specific regulatory development in the islands. Companies and self-employed individuals included in the corporate census will have a strict deadline between the fifth and the tenth working day after the official publication of the order to formalize the submission of their candidacies to the respective general secretariats.
The voting structure will pivot on seven strategically distributed electoral colleges to ensure coverage of the insular fragmentation. While the eastern demarcations will concentrate voting at the main offices in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Puerto del Rosario, and Arrecife, the Chamber of Santa Cruz de Tenerife will deploy additional polling stations in its delegations in Santa Cruz de La Palma, Valverde, and San Sebastián de La Gomera. The Electoral Boards, composed of representatives of the voters elected by lottery and officials from the supervising administration, will be constituted within a maximum of five days to oversee the process and validate mail-in voting requests.
