Another of the owners of the farm that Juan Francisco Rosa occupied to build the Stratvs winery has testified this Thursday in the trial and has strongly denied the businessman's version, who claimed that he had bought those lands "verbally" two decades ago. "Absolutely not!", Aureliano Negrín Armas exclaimed when the prosecutor asked him about that alleged verbal agreement.
In fact, according to his statement, Rosa did not contact him to talk about buying the land until a year ago, shortly before the first trial of the Stratvs case, in which the businessman is accused, among other things, of a crime of usurpation. "He called me in January 2019 and told me he wanted to talk to me to solve the problem of the farm," he explained. "And had he never contacted you before?", the prosecutor insisted. "Absolutely not! Completely unknown", the witness reiterated.
In the case of Aureliano Negrín, he shared a part of the ownership of that farm with his two brothers. "My brother Domingo took care of everything", he pointed out when explaining why he was not aware of the works that Juan Francisco Rosa was carrying out on his property. Furthermore, denying Rosa's version again, he also denied that his brother had reached a verbal agreement with the businessman to transfer that farm to him. "It's not that it was unknown to me at that time, it's that he never mentioned it to me," Aureliano Negrín declared.
In fact, the only conversation he claims to have had with his brother on this subject was in the opposite direction. "Before he died, he told me to talk to Juan Francisco Rosa and tell him not to touch the farm, because it was registered with the Government of the Canary Islands along with others that we were cultivating and for which we received subsidies," he said.
"He told me: Yes, yes, yes, we'll solve that"
"I haven't dealt with anyone and I only spoke to this man to tell him not to touch the vines," he insisted. And Rosa's response, according to Aureliano Negrín, was "yes, yes, yes", "we'll solve that, we'll solve that". Afterwards, he says that he didn't hear anything else until years later, when he received that call from Rosa in 2019. "I told him that I wasn't in a position and that I was sending one of my sons to deal with him. It was something I wanted to get rid of because there were some problems that I don't know where they came from," he said.
After that conversation, his son told him that "it was already solved" and that "they just had to go to the notary". Thus, 20 years after Juan Francisco Rosa began the first procedures to build Stratvs on land that was not his property, Aureliano Negrín received payment for his part of the farm. In addition, the businessman also paid other owners a year ago, including Aureliano Negrín's sister-in-law, with whom he has stated that he has not spoken for some time. It was she and her children who took legal action and denounced that their land had been usurped, and also who years ago contacted the rest of the owners, almost all united by different degrees of kinship.
Neither Rosa nor Armas Matallana contacted the rest of the owners
"At the beginning, when the matter begins, no one wanted to take charge. This man had a lot of power and it is very difficult to go against him," declared José Negrín's widow, Olga María Ramos, who also appeared on Wednesday in the trial as a witness, and recounted the years of "suffering", of "huge lies" and of impotence that they experienced when trying to confront Juan Francisco Rosa. In her case, she and her children were even present as private prosecutors in this case, although they withdrew after Rosa finally paid them last year for that land of their property.
As for another of the owners of the farm, Miguel Ángel Armas Matallana, he is also accused in the case along with Rosa. In their statements, both assured that they reached an agreement to start this work, with the businessman committing to acquire the rest of the farm. However, both Olga Ramos and her brother-in-law, Aureliano Negrín, have assured that neither Juan Francisco Rosa nor Armas Matallana contacted them before starting the construction of the winery.
Regarding the land, when questioned by the popular accusation, Aureliano Negrín has confirmed that there was a ravine on the farm, "which was behind the house", and also that there was once a spring that would confirm the presence of water in the area, although he has qualified that he did not get to see it and that he was told that this spring "was cut off" by some work that was done on an adjoining farm.
