The colonel in charge of the command of the Civil Guard from the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, José María Tienda Serrano, has favored the awarding of contracts —especially repair and waterproofing works— to the builder lanzaroteño Ángel Ramón Tejera de León in the barracks on the islands of Tenerife, The iron and The Palm. The orders, twenty, were executed between 2017 and 2021 through two companies from Tejera de León: Angrasurcor and Solocorcho.
Tejera de León, a friend of Tienda Serrano, is mentioned in the summary of the mediator case on the occasion of a meeting in November 2020 at the Gran Hotel de San Cristobal from the lagoon with the major general Francisco Espinosa Navasalso a friend of his, and the only prisoner of the twelve arrested by the corruption network that is investigating the head of the investigating court number 4 of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, María de los Ángeles Lorenzo-Cáceres Farizo.
Tejera de León, known as ‘Mon’, was investigated by Internal Affairs of the Civil Guard in a case that is being investigated in a Madrid court, as a consequence of the works that he carried out between 2016 and 2017 with Angrasurcor and Solocorcho in thirteen commands of the Civil Guard: Murcia, Albacete, Algeciras, Alicante, Ávila, Badajoz, Castellón, Huelva, Jaén, La Coruña, Toledo, Valladolid and Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Internal Affairs tracked the “enormous” increases in billing and income of the ‘Mon’ companies, in a legal case in Madrid in which the lieutenant general of the Civil Guard, Pedro Vázquez Jarava – now in the reserve, but when the facts were investigated in 2016 and 2017, deputy general director of Support and Innovation in the General Directorate in Madrid, one of the high command of the armed institute— for bribery, influence peddling, administrative prevarication, documentary falsification and embezzlement.
Between 2017 and 2021 the ‘Mon’ companies only worked in Canary Islands for the command of the Civil Guard of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. There is no order from the Las Palmas province. He is not awarded any work.
This ‘veto’ of the builder from Lanzarote, but based in Tenerife, worries the then Lieutenant Colonel Vázquez Jarava, who from Madrid, from the headquarters of the General Directorate of the Civil Guard in Guzmán el Bueno, calls the command of Las Palmas directed by Ricardo Arranz to intercede in favor of ‘Mon’. The deal requested by Vázquez Jarava is not shared by Arranz and the Tejera de León companies do not obtain any contract. Colonel Ricardo Arranz had relieved Francisco Espinosa in the headquarters of Las Palmas. The now division general of the Civil Guard imprisoned for the Mediator case had commissioned Tejera de León to reform the cafeteria and lounge between 2008 and 2012, when he was in charge of the Las Palmas Civil Guard headquarters. of acts in the Vega de San José barracks in the capital. They were the last ones made by ‘Mon’ in Las Palmas. Since then he has not done anything, no work, in this province for the armed institute.
Before closed doors in Las Palmas, ‘Mon’ is concentrated in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where since 2012 Colonel José Tienda Serrano has assumed the leadership of the Civil Guard command, the management and control unit of the armed institute in the province. Tienda, who has not wanted to make statements about the case, takes command. The two companies from Tejera de León, Agrasurcor for ecological cork-based coatings, as reported on its website, and Solocorcho —also dedicated to the same specialty— then began to carry out works for the barracks in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, but almost always with subcontractors. In 2017 at the La Orotava and Icod de los Vinos barracks, in the tenerife islandand in San Andrés y Sauces, on La Palma. In 2018 in La Palma, in Los Llanos de Aridane, Tijarafe and Santa Cruz; and in Tenerife, in Tacoronte and Buenavista del Norte. In 2019 in San Cristóbal de La Laguna and Santa Cruz de Tenerife. In 2020, in Candelaria and in 2021 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, La Orotava, Icod and Buenavista del Norte. In total 20 awards in five years, according to the public sector recruitment portal.
All orders under the protection and commission of the colonel in charge of the Civil Guard of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Tienda Serrano and ‘Mon’ are more than a high command of the armed institute and a builder who is only linked by a contractual relationship for the execution of some works.
These are years in which the command of the Civil Guard of Santa Cruz de Tenerife has a lot of liquidity. He has money to do works. So much so that the chief colonel Tienda exceeds himself. And Madrid intervenes.
From the headquarters of Economic Affairs of the armed institute, the comptroller is replaced to control the crazy expenses in the barracks. He monitors credits, financing and the outflow of money more rigorously. Tienda has good contacts in the staff of the force, where Espinosa and Vázquez Jarava are. ‘Mon’, Tienda Serrano, and General Espinosa, now in prison for being one of the main leaders of the plot, appear in the Mediator case.
In the more than three thousand pages of instruction that Judge Lorenzo-Cáceres has in ten volumes, they only appear together in three pages. They are few, but very relevant to clarify links. It is a date in November 2020. Espinosa and ‘Mon’ are staying at the same hotel. The Grand Hotel of La Laguna. Along with them, according to an audio incorporated into the summary, are Marco Antonio Navarro Tacoronte, the mediator who gives the case its name, together with the businessman Antonio Bautista Prado, known as El curita, a Castilian-La Mancha businessman interested in introducing his business photovoltaic panels in the Islands also accused in the case.
The trust between Francisco Espinosa and José María Tienda is evident, as can be verified in an Internal Affairs report of the Civil Guard incorporated into the summary of the Mediator case. And his colleagues say that similar profiles in cigars and fine dining. Both Espinosa and Tienda are also friends of ‘Mon’. This paragraph of the summary reveals the complicity between the general and the chief colonel of the Civil Guard of Santa Cruz de Tenerife:
«Espinosa Navas receives a phone call from Colonel Tienda, who tells him that his people are looking for the papers, the first one telling him that he has just left the ‘cousin’, to which the store asks if he is in Tenerife, answering in the affirmative, that he is half drunk and repeating that he has just left the ‘cousin’. Colonel Tienda tells him that he is with Luis and that he wants to talk to him, Espinosa Navas telling him that he has a meeting and that he calls Luis in twenty minutes on Colonel Tienda’s phone.
The Civil Guard Internal Affairs agents have not been able to identify the ‘cousin’ or ‘Luis’ referred to by Major General Espinosa and Colonel Tienda. In this meeting in Santa Cruz de Tenerife Navarro Tacoronte and ‘Mon’ talk about how to close a multimillion-dollar business in agricultural and livestock farms, the installation of solar panels by obtaining European funds, and obtaining subsidies with companies located in the area of low taxation of the Canary Islands (ZEC). “Navarro Tacoronte tells Mon that the entrance-exhibition is made by Bautista Prado and then he launches,” reads the audio transcript. Thaiset Fuentes is also at the meeting —Navarro Tacoronte asks him to come down from the room— the former General Director of Livestock, nephew of the deputy of the PSOE in Congress, Juan Bernardo Fuentes curbeloboth also charged in the Mediator case.
