The PSOE of Arona has denounced the use of Arona City Council resources to spread misinformation against the opposition. According to the socialists, the VOX councilor, Naím Yánez, distributed a press release from the institutional email that included a false image generated by artificial intelligence with the aim of linking the socialist spokesperson, José Julián Mena, with Leire Díez.
The socialist group describes the action as a “grave moral and institutional degradation” and asserts that the event transcends usual political confrontation. The party states that there has been a “deliberate use of a false image created with artificial intelligence to construct a non-existent narrative and spread a hoax from a public institution.” The PSOE of Arona is currently evaluating legal actions for the dissemination of this montage.
“"They have tried to fabricate a non-existent photograph to reinforce a lie."
The press release distributed by VOX refers to a routine institutional agreement signed between the Arona City Council and Correos (the postal service) to facilitate citizens' payment of municipal taxes through post offices. The socialists insist that this is a standard administrative procedure between public administrations and that there was no direct institutional involvement or relationship between former mayor José Julián Mena and Leire Díez, contrary to what the montage sent by the VOX councilor attempts to simulate.
For the PSOE, the most serious aspect of the situation is that the VOX councilor used the official channels of the council of the Island of Tenerife to attack the main opposition group. They maintain that the tripartite government in the southern municipality, composed of PP, Coalición Canaria, and VOX, resorts to manipulation due to a lack of arguments to defend their management with facts.
In light of these events, the socialists have demanded a strong reaction from the mayor of the municipality, Fátima Lemes. The PSOE calls for her to immediately disavow the actions of the VOX councilor and publicly clarify whether she supports the use of artificial intelligence tools to create and propagate hoaxes from the council itself. The group emphasizes that the mayor's silence “would only contribute to normalizing a way of doing politics based on lies and the deterioration of institutions.”
