The Parliament of the Canary Islands has brought to light one of the harshest realities of public management in the archipelago. At the request of a direct question from the Socialist Parliamentary Group, the regional government has submitted a series of tables confirming what civil society organizations have long denounced: a systemic collapse that turns access to a basic right into a bureaucratic ordeal spanning years. The official data is devastating, but citizen complaints suggest that the depth of the abyss is even greater than what the government is willing to admit.
According to the official response, the island of Tenerife tops this ineffectiveness ranking with an average wait of 1,106 days to obtain a disability rating in 2025. This means that a resident of Tenerife must wait, on average, more than three years just for the administration to acknowledge their condition. The contrast with the eastern islands is stark: while in Fuerteventura the process is resolved in about 460 days, in the capital islands the time multiplies, violating the principle of territorial equality and leaving thousands of people in a legal and economic limbo.
The gap between the average and the reality of five years
The government’s averages act as a statistical veil. While the official figure for Tenerife states three years, the accumulated complaints to the Diputación del Común (the Canary Islands’ Ombudsman) document cases that exceed 1,825 days of paralysis (five years). Complaints regarding these delays have surged by 94% in the last year, confirming that the administration systematically fails to meet the legal six-month deadline established by current regulations.
This five-year delay is not just an administrative failure; it is a barrier preventing citizens from accessing scholarships, tax benefits, workplace adaptations, or mobility aid. For many applicants, recognition of their disability rating is the key to entering the dependency system, and the delay in the first condemns them to exclusion in the second. Socialist deputy González Cabrera has hit the nail on the head by demanding these figures, which now leave the government without room for the narrative of continuous improvement.
The deceased: a hidden statistic
The coldness of the average wait of 1,106 days that the Canary Islands government admits in its response to the Socialist Group hides a humanitarian tragedy documented by the Dependency Observatory: while the administration processes paperwork, the system ‘expels’ the most vulnerable through mortality. With 2,202 deceased in 2025 -waiting for the evaluation of their disability rating or the effective benefit-, the Canary Islands holds the sad record of being the community where the most people die waiting for a right guaranteed by law within 180 days, which in the islands can take up to five years.
A system broken by islands
The response to the Socialist Group confirms a two-speed Canary Islands where postal codes determine the dignity of citizens. With Gran Canaria exceeding an average of 849 days and La Gomera approaching 920, the disability assessment system in the archipelago presents itself as a broken mechanism. The harsh reality reflected in these documents is that, despite slight decreases in some averages compared to 2024, the Canary administration continues to operate outside the law, forcing the most vulnerable into a wait that, too often, ends up being eternal.
News written by Pedro Marrero. Edited and verified by Gara Vega. Information cross-checked without institutional filters. This analysis has not been funded by official advertising nor conditioned by lobby interests.
