The councilor of the Socialist Group in the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Benjamín Perdomo, has responded to the accusations of the president Oswaldo Betancort about the expenses in sponsorships made by the Society of Exterior Promotion of Lanzarote (SPEL) during the year 2024 that amount to almost five million euros, making it clear that he is not going to rectify “a single comma” of what was said. “They are shredding the SPEL accounts based on concerts, sponsorships of all kinds, events and parties, and they know it”, he says.
Perdomo points out that Betancort's lie, who assures that SPEL in 2024 only spent 876,428.90 euros, is so evident and crude that “only the sponsorship of Navilan and the concerts of Camilo, Manuel Carrasco and Cali in 2024 exceeded one million euros charged to SPEL's coffers”.
Likewise, Perdomo assures that “the year 2025 is pointing to be even worse, because 350,000 euros have already been allocated to the Carlos Rivera concert, 125,000 to the Mangafest and 165,000 euros to the Queen of Flow event. This is not tourist promotion, this is a concert promoter with public money”.
From the PSOE it is warned that Oswaldo Betancort is "perverting" the object of the public entities of the Cabildo of Lanzarote. “The SPEL was born to promote the island of Lanzarote touristically, not to become a parallel agenda of musical, sporting and entertainment events paid with public funds”, they denounce.
In this sense, they point out that to this account are added the expenses made from the Centers of Art, Culture and Tourism (CACT), where the total amount of money destined to this type of events and sponsorships can already exceed eight million euros between both entities.
“The problem is not that we make him blush in the plenary sessions, the problem is that they are wasting public money while thousands of families in Lanzarote cannot pay the rent or are still without water in their homes”, Perdomo has stated.
Before Betancort's warnings, the socialist councilor has been clear: “Let Oswaldo Betancort go to court if he wants, but let him pay for it out of his pocket, not with the money of all the people of Lanzarote”.
“Citizens are tired of smoke screens. The data is there, it is audited, published and they have given it to us. Let them stop offending the collective intelligence of an island that is going through a housing emergency, an unprecedented water crisis and a tourist saturation that they themselves feed with this model of waste”, concludes Perdomo.