The premises that the Tourist Centers continue to pay for in the Marina Rubicón marina are being used by Jason deCaires as a workshop to carry out his private works. This has been confirmed by Podemos in a visit to the facilities and confirmed by the artist himself on social networks, where he shows photographs of the new works he has been working on from Lanzarote and that will be transferred to London.
The premises were rented to serve as a workshop for the artist while he was creating the figures that would make up the underwater museum. However, although that museum was inaugurated two months ago, and it was stated then that it was "completed", the Centers continue to pay for the rent of these premises to the owners of Marina Rubicón. To explain this, the councilor Echedey Eugenio told La Voz this Wednesday that "the artist is still working", that he is creating another sculpture and that there are still "minor things" left of the museum, without specifying when it will be finished then.
However, the councilor of the Cabildo and general secretary of Podemos in Lanzarote, Carlos Meca, denies Eugenio and affirms that they have "the total confirmation that Jason deCaires is using public resources of the Cabildo, of the Tourist Centers, in his private work", by continuing to use the workshop for works that have nothing to do with the underwater museum. "This Wednesday we were in Marina Rubicón and we talked with some workers of Jason deCaires, who confirmed to us that all the sculptures of the museum are completely finished, that the Atlantic Museum is completely finished and that they are not working on anything of the museum anymore", Meca has emphasized.
Confirmed by the workers and by DeCaires himself
In that visit, they were also able to verify that DeCaires' team was working "on a couple of sculptures, one especially quite large", which according to the workers, "weighs 3 tons". And when they asked if it was for the underwater museum, the answer was "no, it was for an installation outside of Lanzarote". And that answer coincides with what De Caires himself has been announcing in recent weeks on his social networks, where he has been showing images of his new works.
"The same sculpture that we had seen in the morning in Marina Rubicón, we saw it later on the Facebook and Twitter of Mr. Jason de Caires, who confirmed that he had been working on that work for some time, but that it was to take it to London", explains Meca. Thus, he denounces that the artist is "taking advantage of public resources", of "workshops that we are all paying for", for his "private works, which have nothing to do with the Atlantic Museum".
Even, on January 31, DeCaires published on his Twitter page and on Instagram an announcement looking for models for a new sculpture, which also had London as its destination. Specifically, he asked for boys and girls between 7 and 12 years old and made it clear that those interested had to go to his "studio in Lanzarote".
In addition, Meca recalls that the same thing already happened with the sculpture of the horsemen of the "Climate Apocalypse", which was also made by deCaires while the Tourist Centers were paying him and using the workshop rented with public money. Those horses were made for an exhibition in London and, later, the Centers considered acquiring a replica for 200,000 euros. Finally, after the controversy unleashed at that time, a "transfer" of the sculpture for ten years was chosen, with the Centers paying more than 15,000 euros for "the material, the logistical costs of the production and the installation".
Asks that it be clarified if the artist continues to charge from the Centers
To this, Podemos adds another "dark part" that they have not "yet managed to decipher". "We are left with the doubt of whether at the same time that he is taking advantage of the rent of the premises that is being paid with public money, he is also still collecting the salary of 6,000 euros per month that he received from the Centers", warns Meca.
In this regard, he recalls that the contract signed with Jason deCaires established that monthly salary until July 2016, although the museum was not completed until January of this year and, according to Echedey Eugenio, there are still "minor things" in which he is working. In addition, the contract also contemplated that the Centers would take care of the payment of the materials for the sculptures and the artist's collaborators. Now, Podemos asks that it be clarified if these amounts are still being paid "for making figures that have nothing to do with the Atlantic Museum, because that doubt remains there".
Among other things, Meca demands that they explain how the 150,000 euros that the Ministry of Tourism of the Government of the Canary Islands allocated to the museum have been used, through an agreement signed last year with the Cabildo. In the agreement, it was pointed out that the funds were to finance a second phase of the museum. However, the answer that Eugenio gave then to Podemos is that it was the same initial project. Now, the party asks that it be clarified if that money was used to increase the payments initially planned for deCaires and his team.
In addition, as he already warned at the time, Carlos Meca insists that it is "strange" that this agreement was not signed directly with the Centers, which have promoted and signed all the contracts related to the museum, but with the Cabildo. "We already asked in the Plenary if it would not be so that there would not be an uncomfortable situation, of a brother asking another for money", recalls Meca, referring to the relationship between the Minister of Tourism of the Canary Islands, María Teresa Lorenzo, and the CEO of the Centers, José Juan Lorenzo, who in turn are nephews of one of the owners of the Marina Rubicón port, Rafael Lasso.
"Unacceptable to allocate public money to an illegal port"
In addition to questioning that the Centers continue to pay the rent of some premises that he understands are no longer necessary, and even less so for them to be used for the private activity of Jason deCaires, Podemos also considers it "unacceptable that a situation continues to be maintained in which public money is benefiting a marina that was built in the way it was built".
Thus, Meca has recalled that this news -which has transpired as a result of the robbery registered in one of those premises-, "comes a week after the former mayor of Yaiza has acknowledged that he received 60,000 euros in bribes" from the owners of Marina Rubicón, in exchange for granting them an illegal license. And also that the former secretary, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, confessed that he committed a crime by reporting on that port license, since he was aware of its illegality.
"That demand that we have been making for the Tourist Centers to completely disassociate themselves from that marina is gaining more strength than ever", says Meca, who emphasizes that "if it was already a shame a month ago that the Tourist Centers and the memory of César Manrique were linked to one of the biggest cases of urban corruption and one of the biggest aberrations that has been in this island", it is even more so "today, that we have the confirmation that it is illegal, because it is no longer a suspicion".
"That the former mayor has acknowledged that he was bribed to give the license, that people were thrown out of their houses, that a beach was destroyed, that a sebadal was destroyed, that that entire coast was dynamited, and that today public money continues to be given to those facilities, is to respect very little the memory of all the people who were humiliated in Marina Rubicón", laments the councilor of Podemos, who considers that the Tourist Centers should immediately abandon those premises. According to the contract, signed in July 2015, the Centers pay the owners of the port about 3,000 euros per month, adding the 2,000 euros of rent, the IGIC, a maintenance fee and the payment of the IBI, which was established that would be paid by the public institution. In addition, the rental contract also obliged to link the image of Marina Rubicón to the Atlantic Museum in the promotions and advertisements that were made.
