Teguise, the council managing housing remotely on an island without cars or its own public works

La Graciosa has no council of its own: it belongs administratively to the municipality of Teguise, in Lanzarote, whose headquarters are more than an hour's journey by road and boat from Caleta de Sebo. This distance, both physical and administrative, shapes, according to municipal sources, the way housing and planning matters are handled on the eighth island.

One settlement among many

Teguise is one of the largest municipalities in the Canary Islands and encompasses very different settlements, from its own historic centre to tourist areas on the Lanzarote coast. Within this mix, Caleta de Sebo is a small, singular piece, with problems — sandy streets, protected land, total dependence on the boat — that are not repeated anywhere else in the municipality.

Coordination with the Cabildo and the Canary Islands Government

In practice, any significant action on housing in La Graciosa requires Teguise town council to coordinate with the Cabildo of Lanzarote and the Government of the Canary Islands, ultimately responsible for managing the Chinijo Archipelago Natural Park. This three-way administrative involvement, sector sources say, lengthens the timeline of any project, from renovating a single home to setting aside land for residents.

Residents' groups in Caleta de Sebo have for years been calling for specific island-level management mechanisms, similar to those on other smaller islands in the archipelago, to speed up decisions that currently rely on a municipal structure designed, above all, for the rest of Teguise.

The precedent set by other smaller islands in the archipelago

Unlike El Hierro, La Gomera or Fuerteventura, which have their own island cabildos and fully-fledged town councils, La Graciosa lacks its own administrative structure despite being recognised as the archipelago's eighth inhabited island. Local government experts consulted say this legal singularity explains much of the management difficulty affecting housing and planning in Caleta de Sebo today.

A demand repeated every term of office

The call for more autonomous management of La Graciosa is nothing new: residents' groups have spent more than a decade raising this request with successive Teguise administrations, without any significant change to the model materialising to date. Sources at the Cabildo of Lanzarote acknowledge that any progress on this front would require a legal reform that has not yet been formally put forward.