What is the talk in Maspalomas about?

Drago Canarias is angry about a property talk at Winter Pride. In a social media video, the party attacked the newcomers' session, which the programme titles Everything you need to know about living on Gran Canaria.

The session was set for Thursday 5 November 2026, from 11:00 to 13:00, and entry is free. Anyone wanting to attend had to register online first with a name and email address.

Pride Properties and Follow the Sun run the event, according to the programme. After the presentation by the Follow the Sun specialists, a question-and-answer round follows.

Drago says one item on the agenda sparked the criticism: holiday lets, linked to property sales. The full list covered buying and renting property, taxes, paperwork for starting out in the Canaries, setting up a company and holiday lets.

What does this mean for visitors and residents in the south?

For visitors, nothing changes: legally the talk is only an information event. The morning session on 5 November is over, and nobody got in without registering.

The festival page first listed the venue as still to be confirmed. Registered guests were to get the exact address by email.

None of the sources reviewed names a rule that treats foreign buyers differently. Canary Islands Law 6/2025 governs holiday homes, with more on that below.

Anyone planning to buy or let in the south should get licence questions confirmed in writing by the town hall or a specialist lawyer. A talk is no substitute for that check.

What does Drago Canarias accuse the organisers of?

Drago asks in the video what a property firm is doing at the festival when it promotes home buying for foreigners and holiday lets. The party ends with the line: “Stop making money out of our rights and freedoms.”

As evidence, the video shows adverts from the south of Gran Canaria: a flat of about 50 square metres for around 1,400 euros a month. It also shows apartments costing several hundred thousand euros.

These are Drago’s figures, and the prices have not been checked. People who work in the south must live ever further away, the party says.

Drago wants the authorities to make their support conditional on withdrawing the talk. The party stresses that its criticism is not aimed at Pride: “Pride is celebrated and defended.”

The video closes with a call to back Héctor Morán, the party’s Congreso (Spain’s lower house) lead candidate in Las Palmas province. Nobody from the festival has answered the charge in the reports available.

How much public money goes into the festival?

Drago claims the Ayuntamiento (town council) of San Bartolomé de Tirajana spent 130,000 euros on sponsorship. That matches contract 55/2026-Servicios for institutional sponsorship of Winter Pride 2026, including taxes, awarded to the firm Isla Mundial S. L.

That money is for the festival as a whole: the contract covers general sponsorship from 2 to 8 November. It does not show that any money went specifically into the talk.

Drago also names the Cabildo de Gran Canaria (island government), the Canary Islands government and the Lopesan hotel group as funders. No reactions from these bodies are known.

The festival's own evaluation report for the 2025 edition puts its economic impact at almost 73 million euros. It lists the Canary Islands government, the town council and the Cabildo as supporters.

Which rules apply to holiday homes on Gran Canaria?

The Canaries reshaped holiday letting with Law 6/2025 on the sustainable regulation of tourist housing use. It is dated 10 December 2025 and appeared on 23 December 2025 in the BOE (Spain’s official state gazette) as BOE-A-2025-26358.

Some details stay unconfirmed, because the sources reviewed could not read the text of the law. Guide websites contradict each other on caps and on the licence when a property is sold or inherited.

According to ISTAC (the Canary Islands statistics institute), the islands had 47,716 holiday homes in January 2025, 12% more than a year earlier. Tenerife accounted for 41% and Gran Canaria for 22%.

The Cabildo put San Bartolomé de Tirajana at 3,280 holiday homes, in a publication of 4 June 2025. For comparison, the same publication lists Palma de Mallorca with 1,006 and Formentera with 717, together 1,723.

What is still open and what comes next?

A Cabildo rule on single management of tourist units, which allows only one operator, is under appeal. On 17 December 2025 the Tribunal Supremo (Spain’s Supreme Court) admitted an owner’s appeal against it, and a ruling is pending.

Reports from September 2025 cite German, British, Dutch and Nordic owners in the south who call the rules retroactive and are considering lawsuits. No ruling on that exists.

Nobody has said where the talk was held, how many people came or whether the programme changed after the criticism. It is also not shown that public money went into the talk.

The town council, Cabildo, Canary Islands government, Pride Properties and Follow the Sun have not commented in the reports available. The festival runs to 8 November, voters go to the polls on 29 November, and Drago ties its campaign to the issue.