The Mestisay group has received more than 170.000 euros from the Island Council for concerts, curating and talks between 2021 and 2022
Mestisay is the musical group that has received the most money from the Island Council in the last two years
The band and the companies managed by Manuel González and Olga Cerpa have held concerts in the municipalities where NC governs
Last Tuesday, the media echoed a writing published by the current members of the Mestisay group. A text that denounced alleged persecution and censorship against its members for failing to repeat a concert at the Mirador de las Dunas in Maspalomas on New Year's Day. In their statement, they affirm that the cause is their public opposition to the Salto de Chira project, a premise that is rejected by the Nueva Canarias (NC) political group, whose spokesperson in the Cabildo, Carmelo Ramírez, recalls that the project has been approved and supported by all the institutions involved, from the municipalities of the South to the Government of Spain that finances the hydroelectric plant, the Cabildo itself (promoter of the project through the Insular Water Council) and the Government of the Canary Islands. “This is a strategic project for the island that has a positive Environmental Impact Declaration, after passing three public information processes to which neither Mestisay nor the platform in which they participate presented allegations,” adds Ramírez.
“The accusation is flatly false because the Island Council has paid this group and its companies the amount of 173.000 euros over the last two years. More than 30.000 euros per performance in different municipalities on the island, plus other curatorial actions for cultural events or talks,” explains Carmelo Ramírez. “There is no musical group in Gran Canaria that has received a similar amount,” says the NC spokesperson.
The text and “Mestisay's statements were disseminated without contrasting or verifying their veracity, accepting as valid the victimizing and defamatory discourse of this musical group. An allegation whose objective is to damage the honorability, transparency and capacity of the institutions,” adds the NC spokesperson, when the musicians/businessmen Manuel González, Olga Cerpa and Antonio Montesdeoca publicly affirm that they are denied holding the concert in the place that they want as part of a conspiracy, in an "attempt to frighten us" by the Councilor for Culture of the municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, Elena Espino, who they affirm in their statement that follows "instructions from the environment of the leadership of his party in Gran Canaria.”
The councilor is a representative of Nueva Canarias, an organization that governs the southern municipality in an agreement with other groups and is led by the PSOE. It so happens that the PSOE and Nueva Canarias also govern the Government of the Canary Islands and the City Council of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, as well as the Island Council, chaired by Antonio Morales (NC) through a programmatic pact that includes the hydroelectric plant project. reversible. These parties, including Unidas Podemos, which is part of the Autonomous Government of the island and the capital of Gran Canaria, “do not carry out any censorship of the group or companies linked to said musicians, who have not only been hired uninterruptedly for decades by the aforementioned institutions, but which is probably the musical group that has held the most concerts with the support of these institutions in recent years,” says Carmelo Ramírez.
In the case of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, they have held three concerts in the years 2020, 2021 and 2022. “And the Councilor has explained that it has been decided to hold another concert in another location,” explains Ramírez, to “diversify the musical proposal of the municipality and move it from a place as sensitive as the edge of the dunes to the Maspalomas lighthouse.”
Furthermore, “this group has performed in other municipalities where Nueva Canarias, the PSOE or both parties in coalition govern, without the political position of the three musicians on the hydroelectric plant project being any impediment to their hiring or being censored in any way. somehow,” adds Carmelo Ramírez.
One of the cases is the municipality of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where in the last year they have held concerts in most of the districts with their show Vereda Tropical together with the Municipal Symphonic Band and many other activities such as the concert in honor of Néstor in the Plaza de Santa Ana. “With almost complete certainty the caches received by this group from the capital's city hall double the amount received from the Cabildo concerts,” explains Ramírez.
“What's more, and for further confirmation of the null existence of any censorship of this musical group or any of its members, the last Equality campaign of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria City Council last year was starred by Olga Cerpa, and the person in charge “From this municipal area is Councilor Mary Carmen Reyes, from Nueva Canarias,” adds the NC spokesperson.
The accusations of this group “are pure defamation and intimidation, which attacks the institutions, and adds to the successive attacks and personal insults made by Manuel González, who has described the island president as sectarian or dictatorial, just as he has described to Parliament of the Canary Islands as a 'little theater', with no other objective than to damage the image of the island president, that of the political parties and the institutions to obtain perks and privileged treatment over the cultural sector of the island," says Carmelo Ramírez.
“The data speaks for itself. The Mestisay group and its three related production companies have not received any type of censorship,” he concludes.
The billing data of this group with the institutions (Insular Council and other corporations) “demonstrate that the accusations made have nothing to do with freedom of expression, nor with the supposed defense of the environment or cultural heritage, but with particular economic interests,” concludes Carmelo Ramírez.
