"It's a lie." This is how the students from Guatemala who were doing internships at the Secrets Lanzarote hotel have responded to the version given by this establishment belonging to the Hesperia chain, which denied having left this group of scholarship holders on the street after the Covid-19 crisis broke out, blaming them for not having left Lanzarote. "We did want to return to our country, but there were no flights," said one of those affected, thus denying the hotel.
"Each of us has tickets purchased since March, but the flight has been canceled," this student even stated, who also pointed out that if there are scholarship holders who returned to their country it is because "they were European."
In this regard, it should be remembered that the hotel stated that in total they had 22 foreign students and that the rest did leave, thus trying to justify their statement that the remaining eight did not leave "because they did not want to."
"There were more than 20 scholarship holders at the hotel, but of Guatemala there were only 10 and the 10 of us are still in Spain. Eight of us are still here and two are now in the Peninsula, one because he looked for an option and decided to go to Seville and another because he has a relative in Barcelona," this affected person responded to that, maintaining that the hotel has also "lied" about that.
A "unique" "dangerous" and "not recommended" option
In addition, although she has indicated that it is true that the hotel made arrangements with the Embassy so that they could return to Guatemala, she has stated that the only option offered to them was "dangerous" and "not recommended at all."
"The Embassy only offered us to return through Mexico, but this was an option that it did not recommend due to the danger at the border", said this young woman, who stated that, given this, the Embassy recommended that they remain in Lanzarote and that the hotel "told them the same thing."
In addition, she assured that they had to pay for the flight to Mexico themselves and that "prices had skyrocketed." "And to fly to Mexico we had to do it through the Peninsula and then we didn't have flights to be able to go to Madrid or other places from where we could fly there," added this student, recalling the almost total closure of the airspace that occurred after the declaration of the state of alarm. For its part, the hotel did not specify what the supposed return plan was that would have been offered to these young people - despite assuring that they did not leave because they did not want to - pointing out that this depended on the Embassy.
"They didn't tell us we had two weeks to leave"
Likewise, this student has insisted that the hotel committed to not evicting them at the beginning of the state of alarm, despite the fact that the establishment denies it. "When everything happened, the directors met with the collaborators and the scholarship holders and told us that they were not going to leave us homeless, that we should not be afraid, that we were not going to be left on the street. They didn't tell us that we had five days, a week or two to leave, because then we would have already told them that we couldn't return," said this young woman, who says that it was more than a week later when they told them that they had "two days" to leave the hotel.
"They told us to find something, an apartment. And we, what do we do? Because we didn't know anything else, we had nowhere to go, we didn't have acquaintances and there were no places to rent either," said this student, who pointed out that then "everyone looked for a way to survive."
In her case, this young woman says that she managed to rent a house although "it was not easy." Now, according to what she has pointed out, the eight students are staying in houses of hotel colleagues, after they learned about their situation a few days ago.
"They thought we were still in the hotel and, when they realized that this was not the case, they contacted us and helped us," said this student, who says that if they are managing to survive it is also thanks to the fact that they came to Lanzarote "with some savings" and that their parents have also helped them. "Although not much either, because the situation in Guatemala is worse," she added.
In addition, according to what she has stated, they still do not know when they will be able to return to their country. "Because now we had the flight in July, but they have also canceled it," she lamented.
