"What the Lanzarote Council has done couldn't be improved by José Mota." These are the words of Manuel Romero, director of the digital newspaper La Voz Libre, who has seen his name appear on the list of journalists attending a dinner hosted by the Council in Madrid, as part of Fitur, despite the fact that he did not attend this event and excused his absence by email. Romero has strongly criticized the Council and has stated that the attitude of the first island institution seems "outrageous" to him.
"This is a fraud and I believe that Ástrid Pérez herself should make her position available to the president of the Council, whom she has gotten into a huge mess," said Romero, who maintains that a "dozen journalists", out of the 19 who appear on the list, did not actually attend the dinner. "We cannot allow ourselves this frivolity and if a politician does that, I don't trust her. I believe that Ástrid Pérez has damaged the name of Lanzarote and the PP. The least she can do if she has any decency left is to resign," said the director of La Voz Libre both to La Voz de Lanzarote and to Radio Lanzarote, in the program "La Destiladera".
Romero explained that he received an email from public relations officer Alejandro Morales, in which he invited him to a dinner organized by the Lanzarote Council. "The email didn't say what was going to be done, or that it was to promote the island. They never specified what we were being invited to. I took care to send an email saying that I would not be able to attend, because I had other commitments," he told La Voz.
Two weeks later, last Friday night, Manuel Romero found out while browsing the Internet and through La Voz de Lanzarote that his name appeared on this list, sent by the Council to the media, to justify the celebration of this dinner. "I understand that this is a fraudulent move to justify a dinner that, perhaps, has not been successful," he said.
But not only his name appeared on this list, but also that of Mariano López, María Eugenia Yagüe and Mariví Fernández Palacios, among others, who Romero knows for sure did not attend the Council dinner. Even the director of this national digital newspaper dares to say that "a dozen" journalists who appear on the list did not attend this event, despite the fact that the Council stated in a statement that 19 communication professionals attended.
"They are so stupid, they don't even falsify well"
"They assumed that since they are in Lanzarote we wouldn't find out, but we have found out and we are going to demand that the Council commit to providing the list of journalists who did attend and the dinner bill," Manuel Romero requested. "There have been falsifications and uses of names here. They are so stupid that they even do this job badly, and they don't falsify well. They think we are stupid and we are not going to read it on the Internet. It's a very crude way of doing it," he said.
The director of "La Voz Libre" has pointed out that one of the people who appears on the list and did not attend is his own wife, María Antonia Rudilla Asensio, whom the Council calls in its statement "María Antonia Asensio", "to imply that she is from the Asensio family, from Grupo Zeta". "The list states that she works for this group, when she has had no relationship with it for more than ten years," explained Manuel Romero.
In the article in La Voz Libre in which these facts are denounced and which is entitled "The Lanzarote Council falsifies a list of journalists attending a dinner of more than 3,000 euros", a photograph is also shown of "the real attendees at the dinner". In this image appear the president of the Council, Pedro San Ginés, the Minister of Tourism, Ástrid Pérez, the Minister of Tourist Centers, Ángel Vázquez, the mayor of Arrecife, Cándido Reguera, and the public relations officer Alejandro Morales, accompanied by five other journalists.
"It's a fraud that borders on crime"
In addition, in the list sent by the Council there are also several errors regarding the media in which the journalists work. "They say el mundo.com, when it is elmundo.es and, in addition, they say that in this medium a column is written under the name "Corazón de Melocotón", when in reality it is called "Corazón de Melón", said Romero. "What the Lanzarote Council has done couldn't be improved by José Mota," he joked.
For Romero, the publication of this list by the Council "is a fraud that borders on crime". "We are going to bring it to the attention of the press associations in Madrid and the Canary Islands so that they can see how journalists are used for political and promotional purposes that may not be successful," announced the director of La Voz Libre.
"Journalists are well fed"
In addition, Romero, as a journalist, has also been outraged that the Council took it for granted that by inviting communication professionals to eat, they would speak well of Lanzarote in their respective media. "Journalists are very well fed. It is an indignity on their part to think that because they give us dinner we are going to write well or badly. We like to go to places where there is news, but there wasn't any here, because the minister didn't even present a video, or a new brochure, or anything. And from what I see, she didn't even talk to the attendees at the dinner, since she didn't find out which people attended," he said.
Even, the director of La Voz Libre has opined that he believes that as a consequence of this dinner to which the Council invited journalists "nothing was signed", no agreement. "When they realize that the opposition is demanding that they justify the dinner, they give the dinner the name of commercial agreements and the negotiation talk for the publication."
Manuel Romero also criticizes that now the Council is trying to "blame the organizer, Alejandro Morales". "The Council pays for the dinner and doesn't find out who it's with. That seems even more serious to me. I'm not used to seeing an entire Council pull names out of their sleeves and put them in a statement fraudulently. They use us journalists and deceive the citizens. In this crisis situation it is even more serious that they are acting in such an irresponsible and wasteful way," said the director of La Voz Libre.
"When things go well, politicians take credit for them and when things go badly, they look for culprits. They are responsible for who they hire to do work, but they were also at the dinner. That statement that came out of the Council putting all the names of the journalists will have been read at least by Ástrid Pérez and if not, she doesn't find out what is happening in her department, which seems worse to me," he said.
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[La Voz Libre denounces that the Lanzarote Council "falsified" the list of journalists who attended the controversial Fitur dinner->65360]
[The PSOE demands that Pedro San Ginés and Ástrid Pérez clarify "the lies" about the Fitur dinner->65363]
