Ángel Gaitan, the controversial youtuber and regular in the media world of Iker Jiménez, accused, without proof, the NGO Cáritas of trying to keep the material that it had transported to Valencia to help the victims of DANA. The declaration extends to the town halls of the municipalities it came to help. “I’m not crying because you have to be strong, but the only thing I have right now is the want to cry,” he says in one of his Tik Tok videos. Since this Wednesday afternoon, it has been impossible to locate him to give his point of view.
“The municipal council comes and wants to keep everything. Caritas comes in and wants to keep everything. And I promised, even if it cost me my health, that I was going to have a heart attack, that it wouldn’t happen. They only ask what the most valuable things are, what machines there are, what generators, what batteries, what expensive equipment… only that interests them,” he says.
He also said he had received threats from an unspecified council – which prevents verification of the information – to send them the GRS. [Grupo de Reserva y Seguridad de la Guardia Civil] or to GEOs to stop their convoy.
“It’s very messed up, people do business here,” he concludes without providing the slightest proof. He closed his speech by adding that “everything is controlled by four, remember what I tell you, they will enrich themselves from this tragedy”. He tiktokerjust yesterday, insisted that help was not coming “and there was absolutely no one”, a completely false statement.
Faced with these statements, the director of Caritas Valencia Aurora Molina stressed that “everyone knows us, knows what we do and what we have been dedicating ourselves to for many years. We are present and structured in the forty affected municipalities, and we have nearly a thousand volunteers, in addition to all the resources we need to carry out our work. We don’t even have to pick up the phone if we need something, there are many companies, individuals, administrations… that offer us everything we need.”
Molina also clarifies that “we have a type of activities that we have been doing for years in these places and that, when the lights go out, we will continue to do them. Every organization has its tasks and we have ours. We don’t remove cars, or repair power lines… Our mission is to provide direct support to people who need it, which changes every moment; “We have the means to do it and we know the most effective way to achieve our goals.”
How to gain subscribers from relevant people
This is not the first controversy surrounding the tiktokerowner of the GT Automoción workshop in Aranjuez and legal expert, who since the beginnings of DANA has been posting videos on different social networks, in which he claims to have managed to collect donations worth 1.2 million dinars ‘euros. Another of his actions, to gain followers among the victims of the tragedy, was to organize a competition between the different affected towns: the one which tastes gave his publication, he would receive help. He later apologized in a video in which he blamed the press for misunderstanding him and grossly changing his story from the day before, and insisted on the story that they had tried to seize the material. Of all the organizations and individuals present in the region, yours is the only one to say that it has suffered this threat.
Given its success, he says, he stopped raising funds because of the tax and management issues involved. It is impossible to know whether the amounts he is considering are true, but there is no denying that it is true that he has provided aid to several cities at what is known as Ground Zero. In another video, he addresses “comrade Pedro Sánchez” to criticize his management – even if the authority belongs to the Generalitat Valenciana –, explain to him what to do and ask him to bring “all army” and to evacuate the entire affected area and accommodate those affected in hotels throughout Spain. “Don’t take this message as a joke, take it seriously,” he recommends.
Gaitán, who became famous thanks to his videos on the world of his engine and who has more than 3.6 million subscribers. He appeared on November 3 on the show Horizonwhich features Iker Jiménez, brandishing a Spanish flag. Showing it to the camera, he assured that “I am a front. Tomorrow, please put this video everywhere (…). I discovered that being a facha is something similar to what I thought was normal: being Spanish, loving your country, working, doing things for your country.
Alongside him were Covid denier Beatriz Talegón and controversial Colonel Pedro Baños, who suggested the attack on Pedro Sánchez’s car was a set-up. This is the same program in which they claimed that there had been 700 deaths in the Bonaire park, as they were able to confirm. However, the premises guards acted in accordance with protocol and prevented access to the lower floors.
Online scams and slander against NGOs
While Gaitán claims to have collected more than a million euros in aid – a fact impossible to verify – anonymous initiatives or with accounts of undetermined origin have appeared on several social networks to obtain donations to allocate to the victims. Although nothing indicates the relationship between the youtuber and these actions, the truth is that some users recommend trusting it. A gofundme was even created to raise 10,000 euros, although yesterday it had not raised a single one.
One of these testimonies stated: “Let the message spread, Caritas and the Red Cross are responsible for the fact that food is not reaching the inhabitants of Valencia. “Don’t give anything to these organizations and look for other ways to get things to the neighbors.” Messaging against these and other NGOs is consistent in far-right networks – they are accused of prioritizing immigrants when providing aid – and contributes to the story of authorities’ failure to deal with the consequences of DANA.
User comments include nonsense like that of elxute, who states that “the company where I work (Mayoral) donated €25,000 to Cáritas and another €25,000 to the Red Cross, in addition to offering them clothing and necessary items, they refused to accept. them and they told him they only took the $$$. Another user, including notch is Estefi, assures that she has “lived all her life next to a Red Cross. They went looking for food with cars valued at more than $100,000 (…) while they gave nothing to those who really needed it. The most common accusation is to characterize this NGO and others as a “mafia”.
The Red Cross refutes the deception
Contrary to what Guaitán claims – who shows his face – and others who hide behind nicknames As picturesque as 123456780wyfidj, aid is reaching all affected populations. Neither water nor food is lacking, although there is still a lot of work to be done and not all cities have received logistical aid at the same time or with the same intensity. It’s so obvious that there are all kinds of logistical problems that the affected cities are doing better today than they were a few days ago.
From the Red Cross, Iñigo Vila (entity emergency manager) explains that it is false that entities like his “demand” the material provided, individually, by individuals. In fact, they neither ask nor accept it. “We only accept donations from large companies that contact us, and here we evaluate whether what they offer us is useful to us. Another problem is that, very often, the problem is not whether there is material to deliver but how to do it: the consequences of DANA sometimes make it difficult to access certain places.
A problem with selfless donations from individuals is that they do not always accommodate the needs or ways of acting of these types of entities. “We cannot give certain things to some and others to others, depending on what happens. We have to give the same thing to everyone, which involves classifying, organizing… If a company offers several thousand ready meals, they are collected, but we cannot manage hundreds or thousands of small donations.”
Another point that clarifies is related to financial donations. “They offer a lot of flexibility since needs evolve over time and, especially in tragedies like this, we are talking about very long lead times. In the Canary Islands we continue to offer aid to the victims of the volcano and to be able to maintain the aid over time and adapt it to each moment, money is needed.”
His words coincide with the statement released yesterday by the Federation of Food Banks (Fesbal) to avoid a logistical collapse since warehouses are full.
Finally, the Red Cross recalls that its activity – like that of other similar entities – “is subject to audits, all planned aid, reports to donors… and everything is framed in long-term plans” .
