The Telesforo Bravo Juan Coello Foundation has denounced in the last few hours through its official Facebook page three situations that occurred during the day on Friday at the Teide National Park and that “they show that the straw broke the camel’s back a long time ago.”
“A car overturned, a tourist suffered a heart attack in a bus and an official guide suffered an alleged assault in the exercise of his activity in the presence of his clients, on the path up to Samara Mountainby a cyclist who was riding an electric bicycle ”, they explain from the foundation.
The official guide, from low and medium mountains and accredited in the National Park, who has extensive experience in his work, saw him as a foreigner, with blond hair and beard, and therefore warned him in English, that he could not practice his activity there.
The cyclist replied that he did not speak English, to which the guide replied in Spanish, saying that he had to warn him that he was committing an infraction and that he could be fined. Then the cyclist began to yell at him that who was he to tell him anything, that he should go to his country, that this was his land and that he did what he wanted here.
The guide replied that he is also from here and that since he had become so aggressive he was going to call the Park, so that an agent would come to fine him and that was when allegedly pushed him, tried to throw him down the mountain and hit him several times, from which his clients who got in the way saved him. They still had to put up with him once more when he made it to the top and sped down off the trail, while he insulted the guide and the customers.
Then the guide was able to call 112, which warned him that at that moment there was an accident in the Llano de Ucanca with an overturned car and a person with a heart attack in a bus in the San José Mines, so they could not send nobody.
“Lack of means and personnel” on Teide
The Telesforo Bravo Foundation expresses its strongest rejection of the actions of the cyclist and denounces the “situation of chaos that the National Park is experiencing due to the excess of visitors it suffers and the lack of material and, above all, personal means to preserve it.”
“It is possible that if the coincidence of circumstances had not occurred, the offender would have been arrested, but we leave it as a possibility because the Park has a minimum staff of environmental agents, so small that they cannot effectively attend to their task,” they add.
