The Socialist Group in the Tenerife Cabildo declared this Tuesday that it will seek clarifications regarding the 1.2 million euros that the governing coalition (CC-PP) intends to approve in the upcoming plenary session to fund the ‘Esland’ awards, which are backed by ‘youtuber’ TheGrefg.
The socialists remind in a statement that the well-known ‘influencer’ famously took part last year in a “controversial ascent to Teide,” supported by the island president, Rosa Dávila, “bypassing the protocols that other residents of Tenerife must adhere to.”
On this occasion, they stress, “the cable car, which had its operation halted due to adverse weather conditions, was made operational and was even communicated to the island director of the Natural Environment, Pedro Millán, all without official approval.”
In that same month, November 2023, Rosa Dávila shared images with the ‘influencer’, affirming “I won’t reveal anything, but there will be signs,” which prompted the socialists to request her to appear in an extraordinary plenary session, during which she denied that this preferential treatment would result in any recompense.
Additionally, in July of this year, the ‘youtuber’ indicated that he was contemplating stopping the awards as they were unprofitable and he was incurring losses of around one million euros, a “figure close” to the credit modification that Rosa Dávila’s Government intends to approve next week.
The president of the Socialist Group in the Cabildo and general secretary of the PSOE of Tenerife, Pedro Martín, has highlighted that the “controversial preferential treatment” highlighted last year by numerous groups is now compounded by the potential allocation of “significant public funds” to an ‘influencer’ who has established his tax residency in Andorra “to avoid contributing his profits to the public sector in Spain, an action that is rewarded by the president of the Cabildo with the distribution of hundreds of thousands of euros in public funds.”
The PSOE expresses discontent that, once again, the president of the Cabildo “utilises the money belonging to all Tenerife residents for promotional purposes,” emphasising the “favourable treatment” received by TheGrefg, who uploaded a video on social media claiming that “a boss of the Cabildo” had reopened the cable car despite it being closed.
TheGrefg then consumed a banana, stating that it was from the Canary Islands, identifying it as “a marketing strategy for the island like we had never encountered before,” noted Pedro Martín.