Forty years caring for the island's elderly: the Cabildo proposes Elisa Corujo as Favourite Daughter of Lanzarote

If anyone in your family has grown old on Lanzarote in the past forty years, the chances are they passed through Elisa Corujo's hands, or through a service she helped build. The Cabildo's Pleno has approved an institutional motion to name her Hija Predilecta — Favourite Daughter — of Lanzarote.

A career built on the island

Corujo was born in San Bartolomé. She specialised in geriatrics and surgery and joined the Hospital Insular in 1985, where she stayed for nearly twenty-five years. When she started, specialist geriatric care on the island was barely more than an idea: looking after older people fell to wards designed for something else.

From 2010 she took charge of the ortho-geriatrics unit, now at the Hospital Doctor José Molina Orosa. That is the unit for older people who break something — a hip, a pelvis — and who, without care designed for them, often never walk again. Between 2013 and 2018 she led the Advanced Frailty Programme: the far less visible, far harder attempt to reach someone before they break.

The other half of the job

Then there is the part you do not see on the ward: bioethics. Corujo has sat on the Clinical Ethics Committee since 2005 and has chaired it since 2021. It is the body a doctor turns to when the question is no longer 'what can be done' but 'what is right': end of life, futile treatment, consent from someone who can no longer give it. On an island, where everyone knows everyone, those decisions weigh twice as much.

The vote

The motion came from the governing group and found agreement across the benches. Coalición Canaria's spokesman Samuel Martín noted that Corujo 'has been bound up with the main advances in local geriatric medicine'. Ángel Vázquez, of the Partido Popular group, highlighted her contribution to training geriatricians. Armando Santana focused on the bioethics, speaking of 'an indelible human mark'.

The Cabildo now begins the formal process for the award.