We are in 2024 and Drago Canarias, the group led by Alberto Rodríguez in Tenerife, has denounced that since 2009 Lopesan has under its control the management of Expomeloneras granted but not granted, that is, that it would lack a concession. The leader of the Canarian obedience formation that came out of Podemos, Drago Canarias, in Las Palmas, Luis de la Barrera, has regretted in an article on the expodemita force website the financing scheme for Expomeloneras, the congress palace in the south of Gran Canaria owned by the regional Administration and managed by Lopesan. It is assumed that De la Barrera knows something about conference tourism because he is an employee of Infecar, the insular operator of the so-called MICE tourism.
De la Barrera, who has denounced that in Las Palmas the press has censored an opinion text on this matter and that he blocks journalists in spurts on social networks even though he has never mentioned them, has considered that "there are more and more voices that we think that the Canary Islands do not live off tourism, but that it is tourism that lives off the Canary Islands and that "there is a public-private network that directly and indirectly subsidizes this mass tourism model, predator of the territory and the people" who reside on the islands. For the Canarian rebellious party "tourism has to decrease, so that the rest of the productive sectors can take off or relaunch." "There is a real political incapacity and business greed that is leaving the cow's udders dry without just a few drops of milk reach the Canarian population," Barrera denounces.
In the opinion of Barrera Canarias Congress Bureau Maspalomas Gran Canaria, SA, controlled by the Government of the Canary Islands and the City Council of San Bartolomé de Tirajana, "it was conceived for the construction of a Congress Palace in Maspalomas, the Expomeloneras, and since 2009 it has been is transferred for exploitation to the Lopesan Group". Barrera estimates that the construction of said congress center could have represented a public expense "of more than 30 million euros." He denounces that the operating expenses amount to 450.000,00 euros, "as in recent years." That is to say, "every year almost half a million euros comes out of the pockets of the Canary Islanders and ends up in a conference center operated by Lopesan, whose company is enriching itself with the artificial support of the Canary Islands population. It seems that it is once again the mantra of crony capitalism: socialized losses, privatized profits.
